Against Me
by AnonymousCreep
Summary: Hindsight's a bit of a bitch, and no one knows that better than one Seth Rollins. Leave it to Dean to twist the knife a little further. Pre-Battleground 2015/ post-Battleground 2015.
1. Chapter 1

Seth has never hated anyone more than he hates the entirety of the WWE Universe at the moment. Maybe 'hate' is too strong a word, but damn if he doesn't want to just shake them all by their collective shoulders and scream ' _what do you want from me?!_ '

He's at a loss. He has no idea what to do, other than win and put those two-faced backstabbers in their places. Not even an entire year had gone by and they were on their knees, practically begging for Brock Lesnar to make a comeback to the square circle. Any other time, they'd wanted to crucify the man for ending the fabled undefeated streak or putting Super Cena down like fucking Old Yeller. Now suddenly, Seth finally claws his way to the very top, has the gold around his waist and the benefits of being the Authority's golden boy, and suddenly _he's_ the bad guy. Suddenly everyone wants a piece of him, like a zombie horde starving for brains.

Why couldn't anyone just be happy for him? Sure, he had Joey and Jamie on his side, but that was only because Stephanie and Hunter kept the duo's pockets lined generously and they were only paid to be friendly with (such an awful human being) Seth. He knew he couldn't really count on them unless the power couple of the company made them pretend. And Kane was definitely one of those people who would love to rip one of Seth's arms off and beat him over the head with it. He didn't trust him as far as he could throw him, which wasn't a very impressive distance; very much like tossing an elephant.

Seth knew he had taken a less than honorable road to get to where he was, but so what? He'd never claimed to be a good person. He wasn't perfect; everyone expected him to be one way or the other, anything to fit their convoluted image of him: either he was the fragile, overexcited puppy dog whose paws were too big for him, or he was a horrible, horrible son of a bitch. No in-between. No questions asked.

No one really took the time to understand that he wasn't going to play that fucking game. He was going to get where he wanted to be the way he wanted to; may the highest bidder win, the odds ever in his favor. It just so happened to be that Steph and Trips had offered the best way there. It didn't hurt to have a little help climbing the hierarchy ladder, right?

Seth was alone up there. Stephanie and Hunter just kind of watched from the sidelines. Joey and Jamie only put up with him because they had to. And Kane probably would've roasted him over a spit by now if he didn't risk losing his position in the company. Seth was used to being alone; no big deal, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty: he isn't quite used to having the entire world ban together to collectively squash him into the dirt.

Truth be told, before wrestling had become the stuff that replaced oxygen, food and probably even water, Seth had been likeable. He had a circle of friends he considered close, but he was well-loved amongst his classmates. He always had someone to walk with, some girl's number to call whenever he was bored and lonely. There were no real enemies for Seth Rollins. The world had been his oyster.

* * *

He got his first real death threat in the mail the Friday before Battleground. He'd gotten threats like those on Twitter and Instagram, sure, but never had one actually shown up at his own home; that's what had shaken him the most. The first day home in weeks and he spends the time mulling over the page in the envelope instead of resting and recuperating.

Seth sits crosslegged on his couch, staring at the note in his lap. He never usually let things like this get to him. He'd even confessed during an interview once that he was pretty sure he was the most hated man in America –knowing this, he also knew he would be flooded with nasty messages from all forms of social media, but he'd never let it get to him. Not until Brock had returned and had everyone eating right out of the palm of his dirty hands.

Seriously, was no one happy for him? He was a good champion, he thought. He knew he was good. He was a good wrestler. He was a good guy; he just had a weird way of showing it. If everyone would stop doubting him, he could just show them. He could make them understand that he wasn't the shadowy villain they'd painted him out to be. If they would just sit the fuck down, shut the hell up and listen and watch.

Seth brought his knees up to his chest and huffs into the grey knee of his sweatpants. He was just misunderstood. He really wasn't a bad guy; who was going to remember a skinny kid from fucking Iowa with any worthwhile thoughts? He'd made a name for himself in the best way he knew how. It didn't matter that he was good back in the indies or in FCW or even the first NXT champion. No one would remember him if he didn't keep going, pushing boundaries and making it so that no one ever forgot his name. He knew he was good; the heavyweight title just validated that for the world.

And now suddenly, the world was trying to take that from him. They wanted to write him off as a monster, a backstabbing nobody who stepped on throats and went behind people's backs to get where he was. And he wouldn't let them. He was fucking angry that they would try to take this from him. After all that he had done?

Seth wasn't the type to be paranoid, but lately, he'd been questioning the motives of his 'family'. Had they set him up like this? Hunter had told him that to face Brock would be a test to challenge Seth's ability. He was testing him to see if he was really worth the heavyweight title he'd clawed through so many people to get.

Did they have faith in him? He wonders sometimes if they only chose Brock because they were like everyone else: they wanted to take what was rightfully his away too. It wasn't fair. Why couldn't anyone just be happy for him?

It made so much sense in his head.

Offhandedly, Seth ponders if it's a good idea to throw the letter into the garbage; no telling what the sender dusted the envelope with. Seth does just that, though he goes the extra measure and burns the letter and its envelope in the sink, then goes upstairs and takes a hot shower that cleans him pink. Does arsenic wash off in the shower?

Cyanide letter or not, Seth is going to fight like hell for his title. He tries to spend the rest of his short rest break to relax, unwind the knot of nerves coiled in his body. He literally has to force himself to take it easy. 

* * *

Jumpy is an understatement. Seth would never admit it, not for as long as he lived, but he was downright skittish to be in the same building as his self-proclaimed executioner. He called them pre-show jitters, but deep down he knew that really wasn't it at all. It was more like a paranoid nervousness. What if it really was him versus the world? He couldn't even count on his family, was pretty sure everyone was out to get him. Holy hell, is this what it's like to be Dean Ambrose for a day?

Sitting in his locker room, Seth straddles a bench and sips halfheartedly from a cool water bottle. His stomach is too jumpy to really keep down much of anything, much less a light snack before his match, so he's pretty much been camping out in his locker room for the majority of the pay-per-view. A little later, he wonders if he should at least try to eat something; his match is the last on the card, and any little mistake could be the kiss of death for him and his title.

Candy Crush is such a mind-numbing experience. It's great. Seth dithers through a few rounds of that and aimlessly types out as many palindromes as he can in the notepad app on his phone before he decides its time he stretched and warmed-up. He makes the decision to venture out to find a fruit cup or something to nibble on so he doesn't actually throw up in the ring from hunger. Fucking nerves, man.

He manages to slip into catering, wrangle up an assorted fruit cup and hurry back mostly unseen to his locker room.

Seth might not actually hate the WWE Universe, but he quite literally hates the syrup in fruit cups. The blood of Satan, he calls it. It's disgusting and sugary and serves literally no purpose other than to spurt into your eyes when you try to open the plastic top and make a mess of everything. Case in point, Seth grumbles under his breath when he gets an eyeful of sweet syrup. He only opens the plastic a little, so that he can pour the syrup into a different cup. He'll probably just throw it out later; used to, he'd just give it to Dean. His old teammate used to love that stuff, while Seth just came for the fruit tidbits. Now that he wasn't there, Seth had no use for it. Maybe he could just throw it down the sink.

Seth throws the cup back, downing the fruit pieces inside in one go, not even bothering to use a spoon, and uses a napkin to wipe at his mouth, because he's not a fucking barbarian. No sooner than he chews his mouthful does he nearly choke on it again when a hand drops on his shoulder.

"Boo."

Seth almost breaks his neck trying to scramble away from the voice, coughing and sputtering on his half-swallowed fruit.

One Dean Ambrose grins at him, throwing his leg one at a time over the bench and sits facing Seth. He settles his chin in both hands, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "Hello," he sing-songs conversationally, like he's just found a curious creature in his own home.

Seth's heart beats in his chest so quickly he thinks it might actually beat right out of his ribcage and fly to the floor at Ambrose' feet. Talk about giving someone your heart.

"What the _hell_ are you doing in here?" Seth pants. His hand finds its way to his chest, almost like a catcher's mitt, just in case his heart actually does try to make a run for it. Dean's grin stay firmly in place on his face, though it does grow a little wider. "Scare you, sweetheart?" he asks.

Mocking.

Seth looks away and leans against the wall. His legs feel boneless, like they might give out any minute.

"What are you doing here, Ambrose? You don't even have a match tonight."

Now Dean presses a hand to his chest in faux hurt. "I can't come wish my friend good luck on his match?"

Seth rolls his eyes. He's starting to calm down a little. "We're not friends, Ambrose."

Dean has the audacity to look disgusted. "Oh, god, no. Not you. I was referring to Roman. I hope you get what's coming to you, treacherous slut."

Seth's eyes widen comically at the name Dean pegs on him, mouth opening and closing like a fish. What was he supposed to say to that?

Dean laughs.

Seth narrows his eyes. He wasn't _supposed_ to say anything.

Dean had an annoying knack of getting into people's heads, under their skin like a parasite. That was all that he was doing now with the name-calling and Seth wouldn't let himself fall prey to that trick. He knew Dean too well. The bastard thrived on that sort of thing.

"That doesn't even make sense. And you know what else doesn't make sense: why, if you're here for Roman, are you in _my_ locker room?"

Dean frowns. Seth thinks he's got him pegged –somehow, he's not sure, it's not like he really insulted the guy- but then Dean says, "Oh, so he gets to be 'Roman', but I still have to be ' _Ambrose'_? Well, at least now I know who your favorites are."

"I hate you both equally," Seth says, folding his arms across his chest. He arches an eyebrow. "That better? So riddle me this: why are you here?"

Dean leans forward on the heels of his palms. "Why do you think I'm here?"

Seth rubs his forehead. He really doesn't need this right now. "Can you stop with the mind games? Jeez, that's one thing I don't miss about you guys," he mutters. He really wishes he hadn't said that, because Dean frowns and curiously tilts his head to one side. "You left the door unlocked when you went out, so I just kinda invited myself in. You miss us?"

"No." It's sharp and spoken a little too quickly, but maybe it'll shut Dean up quicker and they can move onto the subject at hand.

Thankfully, Dean shrugs and scratches his jaw absently.

"How're you feeling?" he asks simply.

Seth blinks. Then he blinks again, unsure of what Dean has just asked him. Did he even hear him correctly? Was his mind playing tricks on him; he _had_ only eaten a fruit cup in the past few hours.

"Come again?"

"How're you feeling?" Dean repeats slowly, patiently, as though he's speaking to a child.

"Why do you care?"

"Can you just answer the question?"

Seth rolls his eyes. "If you're worried about me, I'm fine, and also, what does it matter to you? You're just like everyone else."

"Hell no. I'm not worried about you, kid; don't flatter yourself," says Dean offhandedly. "I'm just wondering if you're gonna give it your all tonight. I won't give you any hints as to who I'm pulling for, but I need to know if you're gonna give me a good match tonight. You remember, I hate to be disappointed."

Seth makes a face. He remembers and it makes him a little mad that he does.

"I'll be fine," he replies firmly, hoping the tone of his voice is enough to stop the conversation for good. But Ambrose shakes his head. "Nah. You're off. I've seen you on your best days, Seth. You can't fool me, remember? I can read you like a book. Somethin's bothering you up here," he taps his temple with his knuckles. "What's up? You need me to play therapist or something? Hold on one second."

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a pair of black glasses that Seth almost immediately recognizes as his own. Dean slips them onto his head and grins, looking expectantly at Seth like he wants an honest opinion on how he looks.

"See? I've got my therapy glasses on," Dean says happily. Seth takes a step forward. "Give me my glasses back, Ambrose." He hopes he can pack enough warning in his voice to have his glasses immediately returned to him, but Dean just kind of blinks at him owlishly.

"Damn, kiddo," he mutters, his eyes fluttering behind the lenses, "didn't realize how blind you actually were."

"I'm not blind," Seth retorts. Dean only waves him off.

"Tell Dr. Dean what the problem is. You scared of big bad Brock?" Dean asks. Something pops behind Seth's eyes. Maybe a blood vessel, because Dean's voice is giving him a headache.

"I'm not scared of Lesnar."

Dean shrugs. "It's okay if you are. That guy's like a snow plow; he'd mow your ass down in a heartbeat. Saw what he did to your little security guy." He shakes his head. "Terrifying."

"I'm not scared," Seth repeats firmly, ready to punch Ambrose in his smug face. Dean doesn't even try to dodge him, just holds up a hand and announces, "You can hit me, but these are _your_ glasses I'm wearing."

He laughs at the way Seth grumbles in annoyance and backs off. "Seriously, man. It's okay to be wound up. I get it, okay?"

"Get what?" Seth asks, raising an eyebrow.

"You're scared that Lesnar is gonna be the one thing that you can't scrape and claw your way to victory with. He's the fucking mountain in your path and you're worried you won't be able to get over it. I bet you think Stephanie and Trips set it up that way just to see you lose," Dean says. He shakes his head. "And people think I'm paranoid. Tragic."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

Dean arches an eyebrow. "Don't I?"

His eyes are clear and cutting, like he knows something that Seth isn't privy to. It's unnerving.

"I wouldn't put it past them; only they could be so cruel. You're totally justified in your paranoia, though. And like I said, it's okay to be scared. If you aren't then there's something wrong with you, and that's coming from me," Dean tells him with those knowing eyes. "Even though you stabbed your best friends in the back to get it, you did work hard to get that title around your waist. I was there, remember? Remember when we nearly killed each other in the ring night after night, trying to be better than the other? We worked our asses off for the FCW 15."

Seth nods once, slowly. He remembers. Times were simpler then.

"I still have it out for you since you went all cloak and dagger on us and betrayed the Hounds, but I would be lying if I said I didn't condone cheating."

"You used to cheat all the time," Seth reminds him flatly. "Back in FCW."

"Course I did. 'Cause I was in the position that you're in now: doin' anything to get my hands on that gold. We all want to be remembered Seth. You just went about it a different way."

Dean sands his hands together and the two dip into silence, Seth mulling over Dean's words, and Dean just sort of watching him. Seth stares down at his boots, brow furrowed. He knew Dean was right. Wait, was this Dean coming to terms with what Seth had done? Granted, he was still pissed off about it, but at least he knew why Seth was doing the things he did. Maybe that was why they'd gotten along so well: they got each other.

"Still wanna pound your face in, but just…and I'm not forgiving you or saying that what you did was, like, honest or anything," Dean says, fixing Seth with a hard, serious glare through the lens of the glasses, "I'm just saying…I'm beginning to understand why you did what you did. I hate that you had to do it this way, and what I'm saying- _trying_ to say is…maybe the world's against you, but some of us are still holding out."

Seth understood now. Dean really did get him. He understood that all of that hard work was meant for something. And he was…

"I'm waiting," Dean interrupts Seth's train of thought. He raises his eyebrows. Seth blinks.

"Uh…what?"

"Eloquent. You got anything you wanna say? You looked kinda shell-shocked for a moment there," answers Dean.

Seth shakes his head, kneading his palms into his eyes. "Don't think this changes anything," he mutters. "I still don't like you." He hates how petulant he sounds.

Dean feigns a look of hurt, mockingly pressing his hand to his heart. "After that little Dr. Phil moment we had? Still? How cruel."

Seth shakes his head again. "Shut up. Get out of my locker room."

"Yeah, right. Need to go hunt down Rome anyway. It is getting pretty late, isn't it?" Dean surprisingly agrees with no resistance. He stands and heads towards the door. Just before he grabs the handle, he pauses. "Don't forget; I'll be watching. Don't disappoint me."

Seth's brow draws together. He wonders if he should ask.

"Ambrose," he calls before Dean disappears through the door, before he loses the nerve. Dean looks back at him curiously. Seth's hands feel sweaty. "Ambrose…you…"

Dean stares at him, waiting for him to say something, then decides against it. "Okay, okay," he mutters instead. He steps back inside the locker room, just enough to reach out and wrap an arm around Seth's shoulders like they're best friends again. Seth tenses in his grip, expecting him to put him in a chokehold or something, and is more than a little surprised when all Dean does is whisper, "show the world, Seth," in his ear, then backs out of the room, shooting finger guns at him the whole way as he disappears into the hallway.

Seth blinks at the spot where he had been. It kind of tingles where Dean's arm had been across his shoulders, like a burn mark. Hm.

The whole visit was so surreal, Seth wonders if it even happened, if Dean had even been there, or if he really was losing his mind. 

* * *

That could've gone better.

Seth lies back on the concrete, letting the cool chill race up and down his back. His back is killing him, not to mention his ego is a little bruised. Not that he's really complaining too much about how his match with Lesnar turned out –if he didn't know any better, he'd say the Beast Incarnate was actually trying to tear his arms off- so it wasn't like he wasn't happy about the Undertaker coming in to give the guy a sound beating, but he was feeling a little jilted by the fact that he hadn't kept his promise to burn Suplex City to the ground.

He felt like it made him look weak; he couldn't even get much of a swing in edgewise, yet Brock had thrown him around that ring like a bag of flour and beaten him six ways to Sunday. So yeah, the night had been bittersweet. He wasn't zombie food, but he wasn't a legitimate winner either. Like the victory was a fluke. It didn't feel as good as people thought it did.

The only reason Seth was lying out here at two in the morning instead of sleeping the hurt off was because he happened to like the stars and the sound of lapping water and the cicadas singing at night. And if it was a little humid out that night, then he'd have all the comforts of home right there by the hotel pool.

He was on his back, one leg curled underneath him and the other dragging lazily through the water. The lights inside the pool made the water look sky blue, crystal clear and clean, even though it really wasn't and probably resembled dishwater in the daytime. It still wasn't the nastiest pool he'd been in, not by a long fucking shot. The air was a bit nippy, what with Seth's t-shirt being hiked up a little in the back, bare skin pressed flush against the concrete edge, the water cool around his legs. Times like these Seth likes best. He can stare at the stars and just focus on the cicadas or his own breathing, in, out, in, out, until it lulls him to a doze, and forget that everyone who knew his name spoke it with disgust, like a curse word or something.

 _Wow, you're a real Seth; how do you sleep at night?_

 _Did you call your brother 'Seth'? We don't curse in this household!_

He doesn't have to impress the stars. He doesn't have to push himself beyond his limits for the cicadas to keep singing. He can just forget about the Authority and the mess he'd made of the Shield, and Cena and Lesnar, and how literally all of America, and probably the world, has a fucking death wish out for him. Seth could just remember how to be human out here.

Seth closes his eyes and heaves a sigh. He really could stay out here all night, but Raw would be filming tomorrow. He had to make that episode, no matter how much he wanted a break. He wonders if Roman won his match with Bray Wyatt. He hadn't actually watched it, on account of Candy Crush being a little more interesting at the time, and if Dean had really gone to find him. If he won, they probably celebrated. As far as Seth knew, that creepy backwoods cult leader had had it out for Roman and his kid for an unnerving few weeks. Part of him kind of hoped the big Samoan had put him down for good, if only for the kid's sake. Seth wasn't a monster.

If Roman and Dean were out celebrating, he figured he wouldn't run into them tonight. That was a load off of his shoulders, but it felt more like one pebble falling out of a big bag of them: it wasn't much. But at least he wouldn't have to worry about being punched in the fucking face or annoyed for the rest of the night-

Someone was there.

Seth's eyes fly open, his body already tensing for a wild swing if need be. He swears his heart skips a beat when he looks up into a pair of blue eyes hovering unblinkingly over him. His body fails him, just freezes, like a deer caught in headlights.

"Cool. I thought you were dead," says Dean. Seth finally lets out the breath he didn't know he had been holding and quickly finds his voice. It comes out like a bit of a croak. " _What_ are you doing here?"

Dean doesn't move from above him, shifting the weight on his elbows slightly. He's lying on his stomach, leaning over Seth, so he's kind of upside down. He shrugs. "I saw you out here and thought someone had murdered your ass. Probably Brock, but judging from the beating the old man gave him, that seemed really unlikely."

Seth rolls his eyes and groans. "I don't want to talk about it," he says miserably, unable to keep the defeat from his voice. Dean shakes his head, and at that moment, Seth really doesn't understand how he put up with him for as long as he did; he was stubborn as shit and couldn't take the hint whenever he wasn't wanted.

"Sucks that you lost, kiddo. How's your neck? Looks like big bad Brock got you pretty good," Dean prattles on, leaning his chin on one hand, "what was that, like, thirteen suplexes straight? That's an unlucky number; shoulda made it an even fourteen."

"Fuck off," Seth growls, "can't you see when you're not wanted?"

He still hasn't made an effort to sit up and leave, probably because Dean is still hovering over him and at this point, he's still too comfortable to move, even if he has been joined by an unwanted guest. Dean looks down at him strangely.

"What?"

"You did what I couldn't. I'm just wondering if that title made you look any different."

"That's stupid. A title change doesn't make you look different. It's not plastic surgery."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

Seth knows, indeed. Dean's searching for something other than the blonde streak in Seth's hair, or his tattoos, or all the little imperfections that mapped out his face: the warm spark in his brown eyes. It's something Seth has heard called 'the old Seth'. The 'Seth' from the Shield, the 'Seth' from even further back, way back in the indies, when he went by another name and hardly knew Dean Ambrose. Back when times were simpler. That's what he's looking for.

"I haven't changed. I'm still the same," Seth swallows roughly, eyes narrowing, "I'm the same Seth you always knew; you just…"

Seth doesn't know how to phrase this. He doesn't know what words will stick, what will finally make Dean understand.

"You just forgot about it."

Dean isn't smiling. He isn't doing much of anything. His eyes look like marbles, blank, blue and a little glassy. He's staring down at Seth with an unreadable gaze. It's almost mannequin-like, disturbing.

"I didn't forget," he says. His voice is smooth like marble. It frustrates Seth that he can't gauge what he's feeling from it, and even more so that it kind of scares him. Dean continues with his slate voice. "I was hoping that your friends were a little more important than a belt, is all."

His gaze wanders from Seth's eyes to rest just below his face. It's intense as per usual Dean, and it feels as though he's reached out with his pointer finger and traced from his eyelids to his throat. It's tangible. It sucks.

"You should get a tattoo here," says Dean absently, as though his mouth is working without his brain telling it what to say. He reaches out and tugs away the collar of Seth's t-shirt, tapping his finger against his collarbone. Seth doesn't remove his hands from underneath his head to swat Dean's hands away. He just continues to stare at him even though he isn't even looking back.

"I guess I don't need to ask why you're here," he mumbles instead. "You wouldn't give me a straight answer anyway, and it's not like I care."

Dean shrugs offhandedly. "I knew you'd be out here if you weren't in your room. You've got a thing for sulking in silence." He's still tapping out a rhythm against Seth's collarbone. Seth doubts he knows he's even still doing it.

"You're one to talk," he snorts. "Guess we're not so different after all, huh?"

"Not at all," Dean says matter-of-factly. "Cut from the same cloth. What did I tell you: 'from one scumbag," he gestures to himself, "to another.' That one's you."

"I'm not a bad person," Seth says suddenly. He doesn't know why he told Dean that.

"In what regard?"

Seth doesn't answer. He shouldn't have said anything in the first place. Dean keeps talking though.

"Good people don't hit their friends with chairs."

"What are you talking about? You literally tried to break my arm once in FCW."

"I never said _I_ was a good person. You just assumed that's what I was saying. Don't put words in my mouth."

Seth rolls his eyes for the hundredth time tonight. "Why do I put up with you?"

Dean shrugs again and finally moves from over Seth, rolling to his right and out of Seth's peripheral vision. Seth can hear him messing with the water, thinking Dean's mimicking him in dipping his feet into the water. The shriek-squeal that he makes when he feels cold hands around his ankles, fingers working their way under the backs of his knees and pulling him, is astounding. It's definitely not a sound that a twenty-nine year old man would be proud of making.

Seth makes it worse, sitting up too quickly and providing Dean with the momentum to help him drag Seth into the water with him. Sopping wet now, Seth shoves Dean in his chest. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Dean raises an eyebrow. "You want the definitive list, or the brief history?" Shaking his head, he doesn't relinquish his grip on Seth, now moved from his legs to his upper body. "You really need to lighten up. You didn't used to be this stuffy; now you got a suit and a belt and a sugar daddy and suddenly you're-"

He lets go of Seth and shoves backwards in the same motion, just narrowly avoiding a wave of water slapping against his face. Seth bristles, hand stinging a bit from slapping at the water so hard. "Fuck you, Ambrose. I don't have a 'sugar daddy'; that's my boss you're talking about."

"Maybe so, but that doesn't change the fact that he gives you whatever you want if you give him something in return," Dean says slowly. "Technically, isn't that how a sugar daddy works?"

He gets another wave of water splashed at him for an answer.

"Alright, alright," he relents, his hands raised in placation, "maybe he isn't. But that still doesn't change the fact that you need to unwind sometimes. Just swim with me, kiddo. I promise I won't drown you."

Seth will admit that there are still qualities to Ambrose' personality that he doesn't quite get. He keeps surprising him every day, it seems. Never a dull existence with Dean Ambrose.

"Why do you want me to swim with you? We don't like each other?"

Dean is still fully clothed, in jeans and a t-shirt, swimming in lazy circles around the length of the pool. "Just because we don't like each other very much right now doesn't mean we can't just enjoy the same things. Think of it as just being in the same place as me, doing the same thing as me, but not doing it _with_ me, if that makes you feel better."

To prove his point, Dean dips underwater and Seth follows the shimmery outline of his body with his eyes as he swims in the opposite direction. Seth watches him for a moment longer, watches him become a distorted dark figure in the water the further away he gets, and then dips under himself. His hair becomes a dark cloud around his head, like a tarnished halo, as he pumps his arms through the water. His shoulders burn with the strenuous movement, protesting against him in a similar way that his muscles stretched after a day at a Crossfit gym. He could handle it, the cool water slipping across his shoulder blades; he could handle the burning.

Seth likes the way he can't hear anything under the water. The vague, muffled noises of his arms churning water, he can kind of hear it in his head. It's a lulling, mind-numbing sound that makes him forget everything except for the routine movement of his arms and legs, at least until he sees the dark shadow of Dean crossing over him. That's when he remembers everything else.

When he breaks the surface, it's like everything comes rushing back with the oxygen. He blinks the water droplets out of his eyes, unaware of how hard he's breathing, the burn in his shoulders and back becoming more of an ache.

Seth floats on his back, waiting for his breathing to even out, the weird lump in his throat making it harder than it should be to relax. He goes back to staring up, looking at the stars with eyes that could be described as rather longing. Everything hurts and he doesn't know why. It isn't the physical pain that he's even referring to, but he doesn't know what else to blame it on.

He floats until he feels his skin turning wrinkled in the water, until he feels like he'll probably watch the sun come up in the pool, and is a little surprised when he doesn't fight the arms wrapping around his waist and the theme from 'Jaws' is hummed in his ear underneath him. Dean nips at the juncture between Seth's neck and shoulder, making comically exaggerated chewing sounds under his breath.

"Got you," he murmurs into Seth's ear. He starts pulling them both towards the edge of the pool, humming some tuneless song as he goes. Seth thinks it kind of starts to sound a lot like 'Row your Boat' by the time he stops humming and asks, "What'cha thinking about?"

"I'm not," Seth replies weakly. Dean still has him around his waist, Seth's back pressing flush against his chest. He can feel Dean humming in disapproval in his ribs. "Like hell you aren't. Regrets? Enlighten me."

Seth briefly considers pushing away from Dean. He doesn't really want to have this talk, and definitely not with Dean Ambrose of all people. But he doesn't get the chance, because Dean swings him away from his chest and into the wall, only to practically be nose-to-nose with him.

"No regrets," Dean murmurs again, "really?"

Seth looks him in the eye, tries to look as serious as he can and muster up enough vitriol in his voice as he can so Dean will finally get the point and shut the hell up.

"Yeah, really. My conscience is clear; looks like you don't really know me that well after all," Seth grumbles. Dean goes quiet for a few moments, tilting his head curiously at his former teammate. A moment of silence is all that Seth needs to parrot Ambrose's words right back to him.

"What'cha thinking about? For you, that's a dangerous thing to be doing, don't you think?"

Dean smirks, but there is no warmth behind it. "Ha. Funny," he says. Seth doesn't think it is. "Did you know that way back when we were still the Shield, people thought that it was going to be me who split us up?"

Seth doesn't respond. No surprise there, what with all the heat Ambrose had had with Reigns. Seth himself had worried that it would be Dean who split them up as well, if only because he felt the world was ganging up on him; best to fly solo, where he wouldn't have to put up with teammates he couldn't agree with.

"But then, you know me," Dean continues with a response from Seth. "You know I've got no one else but you and Rome. I may have given the guy shit, but I didn't want to break the three of us up over it. Please, I'm not that shallow."

Seth raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Really?"

"You know that."

"If you're asking why I left," Seth says, eyes narrowing, "it's simple: priority. I know you wouldn't understand; you're only here in this company because you were looking for a good time. Skirt-chasing, getting into trouble, being paid to break people's faces. Paid thousands, I should add; definitely something you couldn't get just wrestling in the indies."

Seth nods his head back, a gesture to himself without the use of his hands, the same hands that are connected to the wrists Dean has somehow wrapped his fingers around without Seth noticing. "But me, I came here to be the best. I came here to make sure that no one forgets my name. You'll forgive me if you and Reigns were just caught in the crossfire. And even if you don't, it doesn't matter. What's done is done."

Dean nods, agreeing with him. "You're right. What's done is done. But that still doesn't explain why you had to stab me and Roman in the back. We could have gone our separate ways without the chair shots to the back and the curbstomps to the head."

Seth smirks. "Simple," he tells him, lowering his voice a little, like someone invisible might hear them, "you wouldn't have let me go alone. You would've come after the title, same as me. Less competition, the better. Believe me, I tried to put you down long enough to grab the gold and go, but you certainly are a fucking cockroach, Dean Ambrose. No matter what I throw at you, I just can't seem to put you down for good; guess I must've forgotten about our FCW days. My mistake. Won't happen again."

Now Dean narrows his eyes, leaning back despite his persisting grip on Seth's wrists. "You're a real bastard, you know that?"

"Wasn't it you who said we were cut from the same cloth?" Seth replies, not missing a beat. He raises an eyebrow to punctuate his point. It only serves to make Dean smirk.

"I guess we've both forgotten," he finally says, like a tired confession. He shakes his head, looking much more worn and worse for wear now that he's said it. "You never were good at laying down either. Bloodied up and battered and fightin' to the very end, eh? You remember the time you tried to wrestle with a halfway broken leg?"

He huffs out a quiet laugh, a husk of a real one. The last breaths of a fond memory.

"You had your head in the clouds," he continues, voice uncharacteristically soft and reminiscent. Seth stares at him warily. "Willing to practically kill yourself for the gold, huh? Risk everything to get it, right? Nothing's changed. Maybe we've both forgotten who we really were. Nothing's changed. Nothing at all."

Try as he might to find them, Seth's head is empty of any words. He has nothing to say to that, except that, maybe, hearing it from Dean made him feel much more hollow. Nothing had changed, after all. He was right. The saying goes 'it's lonely at the top', and Seth knows it. And after all this time, he kind of understood why everything hurt now: he hadn't changed. He was still a selfish bastard, still scared of letting anyone let him go. He would scrape and claw and bite and let go of everything else to make sure that no one ever forgot him.

He would get to the top and find that he had no one to congratulate him there, nothing but a pair of cold grins and an insipid motto that everyone was tired of hearing. Hindsight, man. What a bitch.

Bittersweet as it was, it still didn't change the fact that Seth had accomplished just what he'd set out to do from the very beginning. Honestly, who ever dove into the wrestling business expecting to make friends? Everyone here was, if they were honest with themselves, came into the lifestyle to kick ass, take names and make a few for themselves. As far as Seth was concerned, it really was just a shame that Dean and Roman, his former teammates, his brothers, had been caught in the middle.

"Shocking, isn't it," comes Dean's voice. It sickly sarcastic and drags Seth out of his impromptu soul-search and back into reality, where the sky was still full of stars and Dean was still within breathing distance. His eyes are hard and dark, a clear image of Dean having put up his walls, guarding whatever emotions he might have from the world, or at least, at this moment, Seth.

Seth finally finds something to say, even though it's spoken slowly and rather slurry. "What is?"

Dean glares at him harder, like he can actually impale Seth with his ice chip eyes if he tries hard enough.

"That nothing's happened. People don't change. They don't ever think of anyone but themselves. Makes you wonder, huh? What if human beings weren't so fucking selfish?"

Seth furrows his brow, eyes narrowing in confusion. He's pretty sure he heard Ambrose right. What the hell was he talking about?

"What the _hell_ are you talking about?"

Dean's hands aren't around Seth's wrists anymore. They've found their way to his shoulders, quicker than he realizes, and shake him once, hard, landing him right back into the wall. Seth's head bobs from the impact, and for a moment, he's dizzy and may or may not see two Dean Ambroses in front of him. He thinks he might have struck a nerve in the infamous Lunatic Fringe, but when his head finally stops swimming, he finds a pair of soft, downcast blue eyes staring back at him. Seth's never seen this side of Dean; it's always been the confident, kinda smarmy asshole kind of façade that was a little charming and a little annoying at the same time.

Dean's voice is so quiet, Seth strains to hear him, and wonders if he has even heard him right, which seems to be something that has happened a lot in the past few hours.

"I would've gone anywhere with you," he says, shaking Seth softly now, "you knew that. You had to. If you'd wanted to go after the heavyweight title, I would've gone with you, always been in your corner, screaming your name with the best of 'em." He laughs, more like a _woosh_ of air from his lungs and a lopsided smirk that didn't reach his eyes.

"If you'd wanted to go after every single one o' those titles, I would've done everything in my fucking power to make sure you had all fucking five of those belts 'round your waist," he says. His fingernails are biting into Seth's arms, but he's too lost in Dean's words to really care. "You knew," he shakes his head, "you _know_ I would've done anything for you. You're my brother, you fucking prick, you'll always be my little brother. I _would've_ …" He doesn't quite finish the sentence, trailing off with his eyes searching Seth's. "Why didn't you let me?"

Dean's wrapped around Seth then, arms around his shoulders, face buried into his neck. He hasn't shaved in a few days; Seth can feel the prickly stubble chaffing against his skin when Dean murmurs softly, "Why didn't you let me?"

Seth finally gets it. The whole night, he'd been wondering, what had Dean meant by coming to see him of all people in the arena? Why was he still holding out for him –' _some_ _of us are still holding out'_ , not so subtle anymore- why hadn't he just pushed Seth aside like he had Dean? Why hadn't he moved on like Seth thought that he himself had?

Seth was blood. He would never abandon blood. That was just how Dean was; holding onto scraps, hoping he could hold them together, no matter how futile it seemed. He had already lost so much; whatever he could salvage, he would give his damnedest to protect. He was holding out for Seth, waiting for him to come back, knowing that he never should have left in the first place.

"Were we just…not _important_ anymore?" Dean's sudden voice startles Seth out of his thoughts. "Were we ever more important to you than the belt? You just pushed us aside for notoriety?"

"I don't know." Truth. Seth didn't know. He had just been so caught up in not wanting to be forgotten, not just a part of a group –he'd wanted his name to be remembered- _Seth Rollins_ \- not just _the member of one of the most dangerous factions the wrestling world had ever seen._ Everything else was just white noise and static. Background chatter and forgettable nonsense. Or at least, that's what he'd thought.

Fucking _hindsight_.

Dean is warm against him. He can't seem to move his arms or tell his body to return the embrace. He kind of feels like he might tarnish Dean if he tries to. God knows he's already done as much.

"I don't hate you."

Seth is surprised he actually said that out loud. It was rather weak and cracked at the end like old paper, but Dean apparently hears him anyway. He holds him tighter in response and says nothing more, just shakes his head and presses him close like he might evaporate in his arms if he let go. 

* * *

Seth stopped trying to keep track of the night hours ago. Honestly, he has literally no idea what has happened since Battleground, he's just going with the motions it seems.

"Two Oprah moments in one night, huh," Dean mumbles quietly. Seth gives a one-shouldered shrug as best he can lying on his side. "Like a Lifetime movie, isn't it?"

It's too late to actually try to get some real rest –it's maybe four o'clock in the morning when they finally drag themselves wet and sopping out of the pool and back inside. The walk to the elevator is mostly silent save for the squelchy, squishy noise that makes Seth cringe every time he moves, and the two of them stand awkwardly in the car, pressed against opposite sides of it. When the elevator dings and the doors slide open they step out one at a time, Seth lagging behind in confusion. Dean kept walking though, down the hall, and looked back at Seth.

"You coming?" he asks.

Seth resists the urge to point at himself like an idiot, and nods dumbly. He finds his feet like a toddler, stumbling down the hall after him. When he catches up with Dean, he finds him digging a keycard out of his pocket and slipping it into the lock. The light turns green and the lock beeps softly.

"Keep it down," Dean murmurs. "We aren't the only ones in here."

Seth nods and follows him into the dark room. He feels Dean in front of him, accidently walking into his elbow, cocked back to point at the door on the left. "Bathroom," he whispers. Seth slips inside, making sure the door is closed before he turns the light on, feeling across the wall for the switch. He hears rustling beyond the closed door, and a moment later, the door reopens and welcomes Dean inside the room. He tosses a bundle of fabric in Seth's direction and peels out of his wet shirt.

"Thought you could use those," he says. "No underwear, though."

Seth nods his thanks. No need to turn his back to Dean to change; they'd seen each other naked more times than they could count. Their wet clothes make loud, slapping noises against the tile floor as they discard them, and the cold air blowing through the ceiling vent sends chills down their damp backs. They dress in silence, using the two white towels to dry themselves off.

Dean's tossed him a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, both of them his. It's- ironically- an Ambrose Asylum t-shirt that he's given him, and Seth looks at it on himself in the mirror. Glancing to Dean at his right, he finds him wearing a plain black t-shirt and shorts. Dean grins knowingly and winks at him, then leads the march back into the main room. He has no trouble finding his way back to his bed in the dark, though Seth has a harder time, stubbing his toe against it and nearly biting his tongue off trying to keep quiet.

Dean suddenly hefts him up and onto the mattress, all but throwing him into the other side closest to the wall and crawls in after him. "Feels good, right?" he asks, burrowing under the duvet. Seth can't really see him and it's a little warm under the thick covers with the both of them hidden underneath, but he can hear him smiling anyway, hear it in his voice.

"What feels good?"

This time, he hears Dean give him an airy laugh. "Haven't had a sleepover before," he answers simply. The duvet shifts in a quick motion; Dean must've shrugged. "It's not that bad."

"Yeah," agrees Seth, "when you're quiet and not talking, it's nice."

"Mean. After I give you my varsity jacket and let you into my secret hideout?"

Seth can't help the way he laughs in between his words. "You…this isn't a varsity jacket. You gave me your shameless merchandise and we're hiding under your bedcovers."

"It got you into bed with me though, right?" Dean says smugly, the underlying innuendo obvious. Seth rolls his eyes, hoping Dean can practically see it in the dark. "You're literally the worst."

Silence falls over them for a long moment. Seth can hear his breathing intermingling with Dean's, and even Roman's, who he knows is in the other bed. He kind of wonders what he's doing. This is taboo, right? Sleeping with the enemy –though not quite in the sexual sense, like, c'mon. It felt like falling right back into a routine, kind of uncomfortable and welcome at the same time.

"Hey," he hears himself say.

"Hmm?" says Dean.

Seth swipes his tongue across his lips. "Did you really mean all of that? From earlier?"

"All of what? About sleepovers?"

"No. I mean, the stuff from the pool."

"O'course, dumbass. All you had to do was tell me when…I would've gone with you," says Dean. Seth thinks he can hear him thinking. "Why did you keep coming at me?"

Seth shrugs. "You kept coming at me. I would've been finished with you after I won the belt, but you kept trying to punch my face."

"I was trying to punch some sense into that fucking head of yours," Dean replies, like Seth was supposed to have already known this information. In a way, Seth knew that he kind of was. He knew how Dean's convoluted logic seemed like fucking rocket science to everyone else, but Dean could think it was the product of genius.

Dean starts talking again. "I'm not the best at being affectionate; no surprise there. I use my fists before I use my words, so of course I thought that hitting you until you somehow, magically, got the gist of what I was trying to tell you would work out."

Seth raises an eyebrow. "None of that was actual angst?"

"Nah. I was still mad at you. But in the beginning, it was me trying to get you to _listen_ ," Dean says, reaching out and grabbing Seth's face, shaking his head. He's laughing and Seth is suddenly laughing, and it feels like old times, simpler times. It's a good kind of pain.

"You remember, it would be me who told you something like that," Seth says, curling his fingers around Dean's. Dean's thumbs brush against Seth's cheek, so that he can feel him grinning, and settles into easy silence. Seth actually starts to doze in the quiet, fingers still curled around Dean's hands against his face, and is just on the brink of falling asleep completely when he suddenly remembers.

"Hey."

Dean takes a moment to answer, must've been dozing off too. "Yeah?"

"Would you still come with me?" Seth swallows audibly, his throat and tongue suddenly running dry as a bone. "Like, now?"

He'd deliberately used 'come with' rather than 'follow'. He wanted his old friend back, right by his side, not watching from the other side of a glass as an enemy or a sidekick. He missed this.

Dean is still quiet. Save for his thumbs tapping softly against Seth's jaw, the rest of him is still and stiff. Seth wonders if he's unsure of his answer; maybe Seth's already beyond redemption for him. It would make sense: Dean had an ungodly amount of trust issues, and various attempts to stomp his fucking head in and constantly ruining things for him was definitely not the best way Seth could earn it back.

Up until now, he hadn't noticed that everything that Dean had spoken of had been in past tense: 'I would've', 'I wanted', 'if you had'. And the past was a dangerous thing to dwell on; Dean knew that better than anyone.

"I want you to come with me," Seth adds after the silence runs on for much, much longer. He just needs to fill the quiet; it's maddening waiting for an answer. "If you- if what we've put each other through these past few months has been too much, you don't trust me as far as you can throw me, I get it. I think I knew what I was getting into when I signed onto the Authority bandwagon; I just didn't expect it to suck so bad. Y'know?"

He swallows. Dean is still quiet, like he's waiting for Seth to continue, so he does. "I'm not saying I want out. I'm saying that I want my best friend back."

Seth waits for an answer. He waits for an answer for so long that the next time he hears Dean's voice, he's waking up at seven in the morning with a hundred questions still trapped in his throat.

* * *

May be continued if there is enough demand, but for now, it's a standalone. Just some sappy, brotherly stuff to comfort me while I wait for the Shield reunion in fifty years.

-AC


	2. Chapter 2

Seth suspected he wouldn't get an answer right away, but the silence, though it drove him nearly crazy, was maybe a good sign(?)

It meant that Dean was thinking. He was thinking about Seth's answer and if he really wanted to risk stepping into that mine field again, or if he was just better off cutting his ties with him altogether and finally moving on.

Or, it could just mean that he was indifferent to Seth's question, and didn't think it was really worth an answer.

Seth hoped it wasn't the latter, but he had confidence in his former friend; if Dean thought a question was stupid, he would usually let you know that he thought as much, loudly, brutally and with enough bite to rival a Rottweiler. That's just how he was.

The sun was barely shining through a small slit in the curtain when Seth finally poked his head out from under the duvet. Dean was nowhere to be found in the room, but from the other side of the wall, Seth could hear the sound of pattering water, and the distinct smell of the body wash Dean sometimes used wafting through the air from the bathroom. It was his favorite wash, expensive as fuck and kind of hard to find, so he only bought it when he really wanted to treat himself. Seth finds himself grinning at the scent gently perfuming the air. He was the one who had gotten Dean hooked on the body wash; he'd let him borrow some back when they first showed signs of getting along back in FCW, and he'd been a glutton for it ever since.

It was kind of nice to know he still used it. At least that meant that he wasn't reminded of Seth whenever he used it and simply insisted on having it around because he liked the way it smelled. That was an easier thought to swallow than Dean trying to eradicate everything that even remotely reminded him of Seth.

No one else was in the room. Seth was alone. The other bed was obviously slept in, the sheets tousled and the imprint of a heavy body within the mattress, but Roman was nowhere to be found. That was probably a good thing; Seth didn't really want to have to deal with a beating this early in the morning if the Samoan happened to see him.

Sitting up, Seth scratches his hair, running his hand through it in a very flat attempt to untangle the knots that had accumulated overnight, no thanks to him forgetting to brush it. Catching a significantly stubborn snag, Seth blew out a huge breath and shifted to sit up crosslegged, using the fingers of both hands to coax the tangle free without ripping out a chunk of hair.

He ponders scenarios in his head.

Say, if Dean decided that he wanted to try and salvage the old relationship he'd had with Seth, how would the Authority react to it? How would Roman react to it? It would be rough trying to convince him to come back, for the three of them to be a unit again, not as the Shield, but as three different brothers from three different mothers. And hell, if the Shield wanted to rise through the ranks again and overthrow the Authority for the top spot, Seth was fine with that too.

Actually…that wasn't a bad idea.

Seth loses himself in thought, trying to put ideas together into a working plan, eyebrows knit together and burning a hole into his palms sitting open in his lap with his eyes.

With one member of the Shield as the heavyweight champ, it would be an undeniable fact that they would be the top dogs of the company; after all, he knew first hand that the title holder of the WWE Heavyweight Championship belt had a lot of pull in the way the company worked, more so than other holders. It was practically just a level under the CEO. With that much power, they could systematically take the other titles as their own and perfect and cement themselves as a powerhouse faction, much in the same way the infamous nWo had done years prior, but with more edge.

Not only could they crush the locker room, but with enough pull with the number of titles they held, they could probably overthrow the Authority in terms of power. An all-out raid. Checkmate at it's finest; a triple cross. Ah, it was beautiful.

Seth felt a little bit of the burden he shouldered falling away. Realization that he didn't need the Authority anymore reenergized him. He could do this with actual family, actual blood who he would gladly share the throne with. Maybe this could work. And maybe he was getting ahead of himself; he didn't even have a definite answer from Dean, and he would sure as hell have to work himself to death to convince Roman that he was good for it.

So much work. But he was willing. He was fucking ready.

Now came the queasiness of anticipation. Seth wasn't sure what else he would do if both of his former brothers decided not to take him in again. The answer was obvious –return to the Authority and keep going- but that wasn't really the answer he was hoping for, now that he'd had a real moment to think about it.

Seth frowns and curls his hand into a fist. Hm. It looks kind of lonely all by itself.

It's joined soon enough, almost a split second before Seth's temple explodes with pain, and he barely catches sight of a huge fist aiming for his face for a second time. This blow lands square against his cheek, throwing his head to the left and making him see stars for a startling moment. When the little lights finally clear out, Seth blinks and gets a moment between to look at his attacker- oh, hi, Roman- before he's forced to scrabble at the hands squeezing around his throat.

Fury, fury, fury.

The swear on the tip of his tongue is cut off abruptly along with his air supply, sounding more like a hoarse croak than a violent curse. Vaguely, Seth makes a mental note to himself: _getting strangled hurts_ _like hell_. What made it worse was that Roman wasn't even talking. He wasn't screaming at Seth and calling him a lot of really crude names that Seth hadn't heard since his days in high school. He was just silent, like he was content to just sit there and watch the life drain out of his ex-teammate's eyes.

Mm. Depressing.

Seth can pretty much accept that he probably deserved to be scared like this, and try to appeal to Roman after this. If not…well, fuck.

He can hear the shower turning off on the other side of the wall, and he thinks it's kind of interesting that he has time to notice that the t-shirt Roman is wearing used to belong to him.

Interesting.

Even more interesting, is that he lets go at the last second.

Seth is a human stress ball, coughing and immediately curling in on himself, his first instinct is to grab at his throat and massage. He decides against it after his esophagus makes it clear that it will not be handling anymore hands wrapping around it; it hurts like hell every time he even brushes against it.

"Oh, cool," Seth hears from somewhere in the room. Somewhere to his right. "He's not dead. I don't have to get the lime and shovels after all."

Definitely Dean. Only he would know how to dispose of a dead body; he's told Seth how to accomplish the deed in several different ways for the most convenience.

"I wasn't trying to kill him," Seth hears from a closer range. It sounds like it's right on top of him. "I was only holding on long enough to scare him."

Roman. And he doesn't even really sound apologetic.

"Be honest," Dean's voice sing-songs, like a parent berating a small child. "It felt fucking great, didn't it?"

Seth can practically hear the smile in Roman's voice. "Like you wouldn't believe. I got kinda carried away after a bit."

"Okay," Seth decides to jump in now, gingerly propping himself up on one elbow, using the other arm to steady himself. "I might've deserved that. But seriously, what the hell, man? Are you fucking crazy? I thought you were actually trying to kill me!"

His vision is a little blurry. He sees two Romans sitting next to him for a few seconds.

The Romans shrug. "Thought about it. But then, I wouldn't want to have to be the one to explain to the hotel staff why there's a corpse in their bed."

"Gee, thanks," Seth rasps sarcastically. "Fuck. You scared me. I know I've done a lot of shit, but I didn't think you'd actually try to put me eight feet under."

Dean, sitting on the opposite bed in a pair of jeans and a towel thrown over his still-wet hair, waves him off. "Eh, you would've been fine: one of us here knows mouth-to-mouth resuscitation." He winks at Seth, which doesn't make him blush. It doesn't.

Roman rolls his eyes and pads to the bathroom. "Dean, honestly, what have I told you about bringing mangy strays around here?"

Seth glares at the space where he'd been sitting and shouts after him, "Ha ha."

Dean grins, holding his chin in one hand. "Seriously, though. You doin' okay?" he asks. His voice is hushed, like he isn't supposed to be talking to Seth. He probably isn't, if big brother Roman has anything to say about it.

"I'll live," Seth replies flatly. He flops back against the pillows and closes his eyes. Something about being nearly strangled has made him rather gutsy it seems. He doesn't try to hold back his words.

"I missed this," he murmurs. "I don't get this from the Authority. It's like the fucking Brady Bunch turned twisted in that circle; or the Bates family, I guess is better-"

"Try Addams family," interjects Dean. Seth laughs.

"Yeah, that's more like it. I never really realized how much I actually hated it. I don't like anyone and they don't trust me. At least when I was with you guys, we put the fun in dysfunctional."

"Aww," sing-songs Dean, "put that shit on a Hallmark card, people; that warms my heart."

Seth shakes his head. "You don't have one of those. And you never really answered my question last night either. I've been thinking about that."

"Really," says Dean, though he makes it sound more like a statement than a question.

"I…" Seth stares up at the ceiling, counting the number of popcorn studs he can find until he reaches sixty, and then continues with a little more conviction. "I want out."

Dean is quiet for a heartbeat. Then he tilts his head curiously to one side, looking at Seth suspiciously. "I thought you didn't want to leave?"

Seth shakes his head, turns to look Dean dead in the eye and repeats, "I want out."

Dean pauses, studies him for a long moment, then nods once, slowly. "And to what do we owe this change of heart?"

Seth looks back at the ceiling. "I don't need the Authority. I was doing just fine with my real family. Besides," he glances back at Dean, a little of his earlier mischief twinkling in his eyes, "what's more fun than a triple cross?"

Dean's eyes widen. Seth only grins, all teeth and eyes like a devil.

"Are you serious? I mean, are you sure?"

"Positive. I've been thinking about if for a while; you got me thinking last night. But I didn't want to say anything until I was sure you were still with me," Seth says, trailing off slowly. He fidgets a bit uncomfortably under Dean's scrutiny, really hoping that he could still get Dean on his side. If he had to convince him that he was squeaky clean about it, no quadruple crossing or whatever, then he would do his best, because, fuck- he didn't think he could handle being a confused mess like this all the time.

"You know if you ask Roman, he'll probably beat you up and tell you to fuck off with that noise, right?" says Dean, and it's driving Seth crazy that it isn't a direct answer to the question. He nods, rolling his eyes. "I know, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I'm asking _you_. I want to know if I have _you_."

"How do I know the minute we team up again, you won't try to one-up us again like last time?" Dean asks seriously. The way he looks at his former teammate spells out just how much he really trusts him at the current moment: not very much.

"Honestly, you don't," Seth sighs. May as well get around what was really hanging over them like a dead goose. "I know that I'm not gonna try that shit again; look where it got me. Yeah, I've got the title, but I don't like anyone in my corner, sure as hell don't trust them, and they don't trust me. I'm paranoid, I don't get any sleep…last week I showered for almost an hour trying to make sure a death threat I got in the mail didn't get arsenic all over me."

Dean seems to disregard all of that in favor of a different question. "D'you miss us?"

Seth looks at him, startled, but hesitantly nods. "Yeah. Kinda. I'll be honest; when this whole thing started out, I wasn't really thinking straight. That's not much of an excuse, but you know, we're all human."

"Mistakes were made," Dean agrees solemnly, nodding his head. He's staring at some vacant spot on the other bed, just above Seth's body.

"That's right," he murmurs, more to himself than to Seth. He nods again, and finally directs his eyes back to him, hard and serious. "Don't make me regret this, Seth."

"Hey, do you really think I would tempt the fates like that again?" Seth says, unable to hide the small smile breaking out across his lips. "I let Roman bust me in the face _twice_ and strangle me until I almost passed out to prove that I'm trying to get clean with you guys. Do you really think I'd put myself through that again?"

Dean looks thoughtful. "Yeah, you did, didn't you? When do I get to whale on you for a bit; you _did_ double cross me, too."

He's smiling when he says it though. Seth shakes his head.

"Don't push it."

"You know, you'll have to convince Roman, right?"

Seth runs his hands through his hair with a sigh, humming deep in his chest. He knows. It won't be easy either, though the big guy might surprise him; God knows Dean sure did.

Suddenly, Dean is tackling him to the floor, no fanfare or warning- but that's just how Dean moved. It scares Seth to near cardiac arrest the suddenness of it all, and freaks him out even more so when Dean starts making these gross, hacking noises from the back of his throat.

" _That's_ _disgusting_!"

What are they five? If you asked Roman, he'd definitely say yes.

Seth knocks Dean away and then the two of them are tussling around on the floor like a pair of rabid toddlers, shouting and growling and being far too boisterous for seven o'clock in the morning. They only quiet down when Roman comes back and throws a wet t-shirt in their direction, and threatens to step on their fucking faces if they don't quiet down.

Lying in a heap on the floor, Dean laughing next to him in his ear, eyes closed and a wide, genuine smile on his face, Seth feels tons lighter, like he's home and there to stay. He missed this. He even missed Roman glaring at them from around the bathroom doorway like he is now.

"You should've seen your face," Dean insists, still laughing. Seth smirks at him wryly and hauls himself into an upward sitting position. "You're real fucking gross, Dean Ambrose, you know that?"

"Hey, some people like it gross and dirty," Dean says and winks at him. Seth rolls his eyes and shoves at Dean's cheek, knocking his head to one side. "You're a freak."

"So I've been told."

Seth just sighs and gets to his feet. Glancing at the alarm clock on the bedside table, he frowns. It's a little past seven, almost seven-thirty. He'll be expected to be up and dressed and ready to be on the road for the next show by eight; no need to have Trips and Stephanie thinking he's on thin ice by showing up late. They weren't exactly patient people.

"I've gotta go," Seth explains awkwardly, fiddling with the corner end of his loaned t-shirt between his thumb and forefinger. "I'll…um, I'll wash the shirt. And the sweatpants. Guess I'll give 'em back the next time we bump into each other."

Dean snorts and kicks out at Seth's shins. "What is this 'bump into each other' shit? Sounds like we'll be keeping in touch real often if you're gonna try to bring down the Authority."

Seth blinks. He almost doesn't understand what Dean has just told him; his brain lags like dial-up internet and takes longer than needed to comprehend that Dean is still on his side.

"Yeah," he eventually replies, blinking rapidly. "Yeah. Right."

"Just remember," Dean grunts, getting to his feet. He's suddenly inches from Seth's face, blue eyes hard like cold slate, and any traces of his laughing, boyish looks gone. "If I find out that you're still a slippery scumbag, you so much as trip and fall flat on your fucking face again for the Authority, your ass is mine. Got it?"

Seth meets his intense gaze, a feat of strength he's actually very proud of considering Dean is looking at him like he might bust his skull open right then and there. "Got it."

Dean nods, satisfied, at least for the moment it seems. "Alright, get outta here. Mom and dad are probably wondering where you are, yeah?"

Seth nods. "Yeah. Guess I'll see you around."

He legs it out of the room before he can convince himself that the only reason his face is burning is because of their earlier skirmish.

* * *

"You scraped by by the skin of your teeth, huh?"

Seth groans inwardly at the voice behind him. Kevin fucking Owens was waltzing down the hall towards him, smirking, would-be swagger in his step- would be, because Seth had at least a few inches on him. "If it hadn't been for Taker," Kevin continues, seemingly unaware of how unwanted he was, "you might've been a stain on the mat, wouldn't you?"

Seth doesn't look at Owens at all, pretends to be more occupied with something on his phone instead. "I could say the same for you and Cena, couldn't I?" he replies coolly, letting the sarcasm drip from his voice like acid. He can't help but smirk a little at the way Owens gives him death glares at the side of his head.

"You'll forgive me if I don't agree,"says the Canadian. "Unlike you, I actually pushed Cena to his limits. I made the man pull out his best moves; I made him desperate. You? You hardly even made a dent in Lesnar. He probably didn't even break a sweat on you."

Something ticks in Seth's jaw. Owens is really starting to piss him off; he really doesn't have the patience for the snarky kid, especially someone so green. "Okay," he says slowly, finally turning his gaze on the man, "so if you pushed Cena to his limits, how was it that he ended up beating you anyway?"

Why was Owens trying to yank at Seth's chain? Yeah, the kid was one of Hunter's pet projects, but he really had no room to be so bold, especially with someone as recognized as Seth.

"Look, I don't know what game you're trying to play, if you want to be 'the man' or whatever, but you need to stay the hell away from me." Seth narrows his eyes, lets his voice drop dangerously low instead of getting in Owen's face. "Don't fucking start something you'll never be able to finish."

The bastard smirks.

The fight that breaks out the next hour on Raw is astounding.

The entire roster is called out to break the Undertaker and Brock Lesnar up before they tear each other apart, and the chaos is enough to get the blood pumping in anyone who was watching it.

Well, the entire roster minus John Cena, the Wyatt family, Kevin Owens, Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose and one Seth Rollins.

Actually the only one who had noticed that the champ wasn't there, as well as his former brothers being absent, had been a surprisingly watchful stage hand, who had wandered around trying to make sure that the three of them hadn't gotten ahold of each other and were beating each other to death, or making out in the closet.

He'd found Seth watching the chaos unfold in catering, and Cena in the monitor room. There was no sign of the Wyatts (of course) or Reigns and Ambrose.

Not until Seth decided to head back to his locker room.

Seth hadn't even noticed Roman sitting there on one of the steel chairs in the corner until he'd passed him by and the man had begun talking.

"So, I hear you're trying to start a rebellion," his deep baritone rang out into the otherwise silent room. Seth jumps so hard that he crushes the water bottle in his hand, sending the cool drink splashing down his hand and the floor. Roman doesn't look the least bit impressed.

"Jesus," Seth breathed, "how'd you even- you scared the hell out of me. What are you even doing in here?"

To himself, he muttered, "First Dean and now you?" as he went looking for a towel in his gear bag to clean up the water. Roman uncrossed his arms from his chest and cleared the short distance from his perch to Seth in three giant strides, cool as a cucumber, yet somehow boiling with annoyance underneath. Seth hardly even hears him coming, instantly recoiling when he turns to find the huge Samoan looming over him.

"What's this I hear about you turning coat?" Roman rumbles. Seth shouldn't be scared, but he kind of is. Not of Roman, of course; he knew how to outrun the big man. Roman knew about his idea to abandon the Authority, which was unnerving in itself. If he knew that- Dean probably told him- then he might be here to tell Seth the same thing that Dean had told him.

Or to tell him to stay the hell away from the both of them, and that they didn't need or want him back.

Either way, he might get punched in the mouth tonight. Wonderful.

"Is this you trying to get back in our good graces or something?" says Roman carefully. "Or is this just you playing lead bitch for Hunter and Stephanie? Either way, I might end up breaking somethin' of yours."

Of course.

"I'm not doing this for the Authority. This is me trying to find a way out. Dean should've told you that already," says Seth, trying to ignore the way his heart is pounding and how sweaty his palms are. How did he get boxed in against the lockers like this?

Roman doesn't look any more convinced than he did before. "I don't believe you."

Seth opens his mouth to say something, but Roman beats him. "I know you, Seth. You're a stubborn guy; you don't change your mind unless you've got a gun to your head."

Seth frowns. "' _Stubborn_ ' is really negative. I prefer ' _determined_ '-"

He admittedly flinches hard when suddenly Roman's fist pounds deep into the locker door next to his head. He wonders if he's made a dent. He won't turn and look now, afraid that Roman might actually aim for his face this time if he takes his eyes off of him.

"This isn't a game, Seth," growls Roman, and it's only now occurred to Seth that he hasn't once been addressed as 'Rollins' since the two of them had begun talking. It kind of makes him hopeful.

"You think I don't know that? I don't want to do this anymore; I'm trying to get out of this hole I've dug myself into," Seth says. He needs to make Roman see this.

"I'm…tired."

Roman snorts. "Really? So am I. So is Dean. So is everyone who was ever dumb enough to care about you. I've been tired since the day you attacked us with that fucking chair!"

Seth kind of stings at that. "So then help me!" He tries to stand up to Roman's height, which, despite him only being a few inches shorter, feels next to impossible. "Help me get out of here, and this all ends."

"Help you?" the sneer on Roman's face is terrifying. "You want me- you want _us_ \- to help you? After you beat us down in that ring with a chair? After you sicked your fucking security guards and Kane on us week after week? After you nearly cracked Dean's skull open on those cinder blocks and cost him the title shot? After you made me believe that for all the years that I've known you, that you were _actually worth fighting for_?"

Oh. Ouch.

That stung.

"I protected you, you bastard!" All the anger is pouring out of Roman at once now. Seth hopes he won't drown in the intensity of it; the man is literally nose-to-nose with him. Seth can see every tired, dark ring around his eyes, every last bit of the exhaustion he bore in his grey eyes. It's a lot like being trapped under water.

"I threw myself in front of danger for you! I dragged you out of the fucking flames! I loved you, you fucking sellout! You were my brother! And then you have the fucking guts to ask _me_ to help _you_? You're asking me to help you after all the shit you pulled? _Are you fucking serious_?"

Seth is at an odd angle. He finally tears his attention from the absolutely livid eyes of his former teammate to find that at some point during the screaming match, he'd leaned to the side, shrinking away from Roman to avoid being suffocated by all of that rage.

Rage directed at no one but himself.

Roman seems to notice it too, and pulls back. Seth's arm hurts. Looking down, he sees dark bruises forming already, a bracelet of blue around his upper arm, just underneath his shirt sleeve. Roman's fingertips brush uncomfortably against them when he pulls his hand away. When had he grabbed him?

It all happened so fast, he guessed.

It's eerily quiet in the locker room, save for the sound of the two of their lungs pumping hard and fast to keep the air flowing through their throats. Seth frowns at himself. Why is he panting? He hardly said anything in edgewise.

Seth looks up from his arm to Roman, who seems to find more interest in the floor tiles than the man who he had been screaming at just moments before. Seth has to work to stop himself from curling his hand protectively over his arm.

"I know," he says quietly. Roman snaps his gaze up towards him, and Seth forces himself not to flinch. He's pretty sure that now that Roman has gotten the anger and rage out of his system for the time being, he won't hurt him. Still, he'd never actually seen Roman enraged before. There was no telling what he was capable of when he was livid.

"I know," Seth repeats quietly. "I know the last thing I deserve is to ask you for your help. Hell, I don't even have the right to even think about asking you to forgive me."

Roman says nothing, so Seth continues, carefully picking his words.

"I know I can't take back what I did, or what I said. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't at least hopeful that you guys would consider accepting an apology, but I'm not asking you to do that. If you find it in your heart to do that, then I will do everything in my power to honor that. And even if you don't, I'll understand. I'll just have to live with it. But I can't keep living like this, constantly looking over my shoulder and being paranoid all the time. There's no one I can trust. I keep hearing…" Seth shakes his head.

"Nevermind that. Look, don't accept my apology, or do. Either way, I just think that it's good to let you know that I'm finding a way out."

For his part, Roman is quiet. He doesn't sneer at Seth, and even more astoundingly, doesn't punch him square in the fucking face. He levels him with a wary stare, like he's a wild animal who doesn't trust him. If he didn't look completely spent before, he sure does now.

He sighs.

Then he says, low and cold, "And why should I care?"

Seth can't deny that his heart drops a little at the easy dismissal, but he shrugs anyway. "You don't have to care. Just wanted you to know what was going on. Didn't want to keep you guys in the dark anymore."

Roman exhales hard through his nose and looks away, grey eyes downcast. His shoulders slump in defeat of some sort, and the next thing he says, kind of makes Seth's heart hurt. "It's…Seth, it's too late for that. I appreciate what you're trying to do now, but that ship has sailed, man."

Seth nods once, slowly. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't disappointed. But at least Roman wasn't trying to bust his face in.

"That's fine." Seth nods again. "I get it. No, really. I just wanted you to know. I didn't expect you to believe me or even forgive me."

He looks down at his feet, then back up at Roman, fishing for words. "Uh, I…have to go. Need to go keep up appearances, y'know. Hunter's probably wondering why I haven't checked in with him yet."

Roman looks confused, but he lets him go with a stiff nod, just a short tilt of the head. Seth smiles tight-lipped and strained, and then he goes. He all but runs out of the locker room.

* * *

It's probably fifty degrees when Dean gets up and walks out to the courtyard for a smoke.

Well, he'd stopped smoking a while ago, a little before the Shield had been put together. He'd wanted to give that endeavor his all, and he knew he sure as hell couldn't do that with black tobacco tar in his lungs. After, well…

He'd already worked so hard to quit, he'd be damned if he let all that hard work go to waste; at least _something_ good would come out of the Shield debacle.

Smoke breaks usually came in the form of Dean standing outside in the chilly night air and breathing in and out, watching his breath dissipate like smoke and letting his lungs fill with the cold. It made his chest heavy and deep like the cigarettes did, and when he went back inside to the warm, room temperature hotel, his lungs tightened up and then relaxed eventually. It kind of simulated cigarettes. It was enough sometimes.

Dean was by no means a ninja, but somehow, he manages to sneak up on the unsuspecting guy in the courtyard –the only other crazed motherfucker to be outside at two in the morning- walking around in circles, staring at the moon.

"Sorry, to interrupt your little ritual," Dean smirked at Seth's startled flinch, "but its about time for all the little witches to go to bed."

Seth frowned at him, unimpressed at the jab. "I'm thinking."

"Knew I smelled smoke." Dean plops down in one of the lawn chairs on the green, looks expectantly at Seth. "What's on your mind, kid?"

Seth sighs wearily. Dean has only now noticed that he isn't wearing a jacket, or sleeves for that matter. What was probably a nice white band t-shirt in its earlier life had been mutilated and amputated into a sleeveless muscle top –Dean was pretty sure he'd seen Seth wear that to the ring a few times back in FCW. Ah, memories.

"Rome told me you two talked," Dean says to lure some conversation out of Seth. Seth seems to deflate at that, raking his hand over his face. Dean acts on that. "Do you…wanna…talk about it?"

"Not really," comes Seth's raspy admittance. "I've been trying to find a way around that."

"'Round what?"

Seth finally turns to him fully. "He didn't tell you?"

"Whatever it is, probably not. He just told me that you two talked in the locker room and that I should keep an eye out for any of your shady activity."

Seth sighs again, has the audacity to look crestfallen. Dean shouldn't care, Roman's kind of right. Seth's just never looked so…hopeless.

"C'mere."

Seth drags his eyes to Dean, flat and unimpressed. Dean nods, scoots over to make a little sliver of room-barely enough space for one ass-cheek- and beckons to him. "C'mere," he says again.

Seth reluctantly relents, crossing the short distance and dropping uncharacteristically carelessly into the tiny space Dean had made for him. He kind of elbows him in the chest when he leans back, but Dean doesn't mention it or even make a noise about it, and wraps an arm around Seth's shoulders like an iron band before he can protest.

"You're freezing," he mumbles. "Why didn't you wear something with fucking sleeves?"

Seth shrugs against Dean's side. He honestly doesn't know. He'd gotten up out of bed –he hadn't been sleeping, just lying awake under the covers- and had shuffled out here in his sleepwear for some fresh air. He picks at the frayed end of the hem of his left sweatpant leg with his toe and avoids Dean's gaze at all times.

"What's the setback, kid?" asks Dean. "You look like you've lost your best friend."

Seth gives him a flat look with enough venom in it to kill small animals.

"Sorry," Dean apologizes.

"I tried to apologize to Roman. I'm guessing you told him about the plan to leave the Authority; he didn't take too kindly to me asking him to help me out," Seth finally explains.

"He didn't hurt you, did he?"

Seth's brow furrows. His mind draws a blank pause for a moment. "What?"

"You're okay, right? I know Rome can get a little rough when he's pissed off."

"We both know that," Seth absently corrects him. "But, no. I'm okay. He basically told me that he can't trust me, and you shouldn't either. He said…" Seth frowns deeper, becoming more aggressive in his absentminded quest to mess with the hem of his sweatpants. "I think he regrets being my friend? He doesn't accept my apology, which is understandable, I get it. He regrets looking out for me, I think? Being the 'big brother'. And I know he has every right to, but, I mean, it still…" Seth breathes out, long and tired, trying to clear the scratchiness in his throat. "It still…kinda…"

He trails off. He can't bring himself to admit it.

 _It hurts_.

He knows he's the last person Dean wants to hear complain about being hurt by your friends; the irony was almost physically sickening. It's not even pride that inhibits him from admitting how badly it stings to have Roman tell him that he regrets literally all of Seth's existence –its humility. But as the giant Samoan had so eloquently told him; _too little, too late_.

Hindsight was a fucking. Bitch.

"You know I'm with you," says Dean, breaking Seth out of his thoughts.

"Yeah, about that," Seth cranes his neck to look back at Dean. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you with me?"

Dean looks thoughtful for a moment. "I got trust issues. But you know that. You know lots about me. I know lots about you. You may think you're puttin' on a real brave front for all o' those people in the stands, but I've seen how you're wilting out there."

Dean turns and looks at Seth fully. "You're dying out there. Got it? You used to have such a glow about you, and ever since mom and dad started having their doubts about, you've been looking over your shoulder and questioning everyone around you. I know the look of a guy who's losing his mind."

"Maybe it's just me spending way too much time around that giant fucking sap Roman, but I don't want to watch you go out like that."

Seth shivers, but it's not the night air.

Everything is just so fragile. He sees that now. One wrong move, one misunderstanding, and he was done.

He's just kind of staring at Dean now, lips pursed like he's locking them closed, keeping the words that are trapped in his head from rocketing out, saying something stupid.

Dean nods and shakes Seth's shoulder. "C'mon. Let's go inside; I think I'm gonna catch a fucking cold just looking at you."

He gets up, helps Seth to his feet. They walk back in complete silence, and Seth realizes they haven't actually spoken about much pertaining to the whole Authority turn. That's okay with Seth though. He'd rather fine-tune his backup plan and then take a fucking nap, because, wow, is he suddenly tired.

"I'm sorry."

It doesn't matter who said it first; they both stop in the middle of the hall and stare at each other like they've turned purple. Seth blinks and then clears his throat.

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "For everything. I honestly understand if you regret being my friend too. It's just, I know that I can get out of there on my own, but that's not even the point," and Seth doesn't care that he's rambling, probably doesn't even know, "I feel like it's not worth it if I just leave without getting anything back, and I don't mean the belt or the fame, or any of that shit; that doesn't even matter. I don't want it anymore. And I'm not saying that I just got tired of all of that, and I'm not saying that I got tired of you and Roman either. It's not a disposable thing, I mean-"

"Breathe, kiddo," Dean says gently, which in itself is insane, because Dean's not a gentle guy. But it shuts Seth up.

"I thought you said Roman didn't hurt you," Dean says now, eying Seth skeptically.

Seth furrows his brow in momentary confusion, then rolls his eyes. The bruises.

Damn sleeveless shirt.

"It doesn't matter," he says firmly. "And maybe it wasn't Roman, yeah? I _was_ in the ring tonight."

Dean snorts. "Fucking _please_. You were in the ring for ten minutes with Cena and didn't do shit. He dragged your name through the mud for all ten of those minutes. You walked off without so much as a swing in edgewise."

Something ticks in Seth's brain. "It doesn't matter! Okay? You don't care –you shouldn't give a damn about what happens to me, right? I deserve whatever comes to me, right? I'm tired, okay? And Roman's probably wondering where you are."

Seth has literally no idea where all that venom came from, and he isn't exactly up to finding out why. He just wants to go to sleep and forget about how weird this day has been.

Forget about how part of him is thoroughly ecstatic that Dean is worried about him.

He doesn't deserve it. Roman knows that. Why doesn't Dean?

Seth's room is cold when he gets inside. Just like he left it.

He slips under the covers, slaps his room key on his bedside table. Vaguely he's reminded of the impromptu sleepover he'd had with Dean the day before as he curls in on himself under the sheets, and even fainter, fingertips brushing across his cheek bones, kind of chlorine-smelly and warm.

It's harder to fall asleep now that he's alone.

Especially now that he's alone.

* * *

Sometimes, if you didn't know Dean any better, you'd mistake his sense of humor for innuendo.

"I don't care if you don't trust him. Don't beat on Seth, alright?"

Roman grunts and rolls over. He'd been asleep when Dean had come in and seated himself on the edge of his bed.

"What?"

Dean stares at him in the darkness. "I saw those bruises you left. I thought you said you were just talking?"

Roman growls, either pissed at being woken up, or…

No, that was probably it. Being woken up to be scolded about someone he didn't even like –what was worse, someone Dean didn't even like, until now apparently.

"We got into it, so what? You punched him in the face more than once –you've left worse bruises than that," he says, sounding sleepy and positively venomous. Let him.

Wasn't like Dean cared anyway.

"Don't act like you never got mad at him," Roman continues. "Fucking hell, you act like he's your girlfriend or something."

Dean snorts. "Well, if you try to break his arm again like that, I'll beat you like the devil beats his girlfriend."

Roman laughs with no humor behind it and rolls over. Goes back to sleep.

Dean tries to. Really tries to.

Fuck Roman and his girlfriend jokes. He tells himself that it's because of him that Dean dreams of girls with blonde hair on one side of their heads and fucking beards.

And he's kind of okay with that.

* * *

 **hi everyone. might leave this here. let me know if you want more. if not, we'll just let Dean's unrequited love be unrequited forever.**

 **-AC**


	3. Chapter 3

It's been two weeks.

Seth hasn't talked to Dean or Roman for the entirety of that time, hasn't really seen them either. Admittedly, that was part because Seth was avoiding them. Perhaps rightfully so, because every time he spots Dean, Roman isn't too far behind him.

Giving him death glares from over Dean's shoulder.

And Seth is so miserable now that he kind of wishes that looks could kill.

That was so fast. Seth is kind of surprised that it took that long for him to sink as low as he has. Its amazing how Roman not even bothering to hear him out has royally fucked up his life to this extent. Seth Rollins was by no means a weak man, but damn if he'd been broken to pieces by the way Roman had brushed him off. The weight of self-loathing was straining on his shoulders.

"You look like Lesnar beat you up in the parking lot."

Seth grimaces at the voice behind him and tiredly shuffles around to come face to face with one Randy Orton, smirking like a blue-eyed devil.

"You look like something Hunter bought from an antique store," Seth retorts grumpily. It's not his usual brand of sass and scathing comeback material, but he can't really blame himself too much; he hasn't been sleeping well lately.

Still, Orton's lip curls back dangerously over his teeth in a violent grin. "Ha," he murmurs humorlessly. "Funny. Y'know, just because you're the new blood under his wing, don't think he won't get tired of you just as quick as he let you in. You're nothing but a shiny toy to the Authority. An' seeing as how Steph's the Million Dollar Princess, they can easily afford more of you."

Seth really doesn't need to hear this. Is everyone trying to fuck with his head?

"Like you?" he hisses. "You used to be me, Hunter's favorite kid. Now he doesn't even like you, can't stand you. I will never end up like you, a washed up old has-been still trying to make waves in a company that doesn't even want him anymore. I will always be in the spotlight, Orton, Triple H and Stephanie be damned. I can do this by myself."

It takes quite a bit of strength for Seth to say that, knowing full well that 'by himself' was probably a death sentence. Once he betrayed the Authority, chances were he would have no one to go back to, no one to build him back up. Not Dean, especially not with Roman by his side all the time. No one else would have him, in-ring or not.

Orton sneers. "Sounds a bit like mutiny, don't you think?"

Seth narrows his eyes. "Don't get any bright ideas. You should get your hearing checked; and maybe a walker for when your hip gives out."

Seth is backing away down the hall after he says this, painting an arrogant smirk on his face and a wink for the Viper to play up his insufferable, big-shot image to the man. He's not afraid. He's not exhausted. He's not paranoid. He's Seth Rollins, damn it.

At least until he gets to the locker room and locks the door, checks to make sure Roman or Dean isn't hiding out inside, and huddles against the benches.

When Seth was a kid, he'd dreamed of being the World Heavyweight champion. He'd spent afternoons lying on the living room floor of his parent's home, coloring in championship belts he'd drawn with his crayons, and parading around in the backyard with them taped around his tiny waist. He'd seen the Ultimate Warrior do it, Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold Steve Austin, even his boss Triple H wearing the belt like he was, holding it up in the ring for the fans to eat up. Seth had tried that in his neighbor's trampoline in the backyard –the neighborhood kid's wrestling ring of makeshift sorts- and had been dreaming of the day he would hold the gold in his hands for real.

He'd never dreamed that it would drive him crazy. How had they done it? How had the champions of old done it, bearing the power that came with the belt without losing their minds? The pressure was crushing. Sometimes, when he wore it out to the ring, it felt like an iron band wrapped around his waist, severing his circulation, suffocating him. Seth had since quit wearing it like a belt.

Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he thought about why the belt had made him this way. The ideas ranged from insane to beyond ridiculous. Maybe the belt was laced with some kind of fear toxin, like in the comic books he'd read as a kid. Or maybe Stephanie and Hunter had brainwashed him before, and he just couldn't remember it, and this was his brain trying to reject it. Maybe the entrance music they'd provided him with contained subliminal messages. Maybe it was mind control. Or maybe Kane had hexed him with some fucking devil magic.

Okay, that one was a little far-fetched.

There just had to be a reason why Seth was on autopilot right now. Why was he so paranoid? He wasn't like this. He glances over at the golden belt poking halfway out of his gym bag with a wince. Why had it made him this way?

The next thing he knows, Seth's jerking awake to the sound of pounding on the door and the wiggling of the doorknob. Whoever it is sounds like they're trying to knock the door off its hinges, and it's giving Seth a headache.

"Seth," comes a voice from the other side of the door, yet the pounding still persists. "You're on in five minutes! Get out here now!"

Seth vaguely recalls who the voice belongs to, but he can't quite put his finger on the speaker's name or face. They go away soon after without even hearing Seth's reply of acknowledgement, leaving Seth to groggily search around the room like a blind man. For what, he didn't know. How had he fallen asleep? How long had he been out? Where the fuck was he?

It takes an astounding amount of time for him to locate his phone and check the digital clock on the screen, and even longer for him to actually rouse himself enough to get up from the floor. He has no idea what he's supposed to be doing once he gets out of the locker room. God forbid he no-show; Trips and Steph would burst a collective blood vessel.

Seth begins a search for a stage hand who can point him in the right direction, but he must look like death warmed over, because everyone keeps avoiding him. He's about to give up and just hang around in the guerilla position until someone comes to find him and guide him to where he needs to be, but from the corner of his eye, he catches movement.

A flash of gaudy neon orange disappearing around the corner.

Seth immediately chases after the walking traffic cone, completely forgetting that he wasn't even supposed to be talking to the fucker, let alone be chasing after him like a lost little kid in the mall, and the fact that John Cena didn't like him anyway.

He forgets that tiny detail the moment he catches up with the guy, breathlessly panting out his name –first name, what the hell- and grabbing hold of one broad shoulder. He also realizes that, _whoa_ , _he's_ _made a terrible mistake_ , when he feels John tense under his hand and whirl around so quickly that _Seth_ gets whiplash.

Groggy and not even half of the healthy condition he's used to being in, Seth can't manage to move fast enough to get out of John's reach, and takes a fist to his chest that knocks the air out of him and the floor from underneath him.

"You couldn't just wait for me to kick your ass until we got to the ring, man?" John says, looming over Seth's boneless body. Seth grunts and rolls over on his back. "God, no," he wheezes, and then realizes what a bad answer that was. "I mean, I wasn't-"

"Whoa, kid, you look awful," John interrupts, raising an eyebrow. Seth finally hoists himself into a sitting position. "Tell me something I don't know. I wasn't trying to sneak up on you, by the way, so thanks for that."

John shrugs. "Coulda fooled me. Not the first time some guy's tried to jump me in a hallway, and I certainly wouldn't put it past a dirtball like you." He says it like he's just having a normal conversation with him, no real venom in his voice at all.

"Someone hit you?" the superman continues. "You look like you've got two black eyes."

Seth huffs and pulls himself to his feet. "No. Look, can we talk? Like, someplace…quiet?"

John gives him an incredulous look that somehow manages to be suspicious at the same time. "What's wrong with out here? You'll forgive me if I don't exactly trust you."

"I know, I know," Seth sighs, running his hand over his hair. "But I'm being serious. I have to keep up the image; at least until I figure out what I'm going to do."

John looks skeptical, and Seth almost wants to scream. But then Cena nods and jerks his head towards an unused company room, silently gesturing for Seth to follow. Seth allows his feet to move him along without him really thinking about it. He just wants to go back to sleep.

"What are we talking about?" John asks once they've been hidden from view. His voice is surprisingly quiet, as opposed to how loud it is in the ring. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks at Seth with scrutiny. "I'm guessing it has something to do with why you look like roadkill?"

Seth knows he looks awful, but he doesn't need everyone and their mother telling him so. He frowns.

"Kinda." He hates how small he sounds. He hates how tired he sounds too. Seth drags his hands over his face and sighs, hopping up onto a table pushed against the wall with little grace. Both of them sit in silence for a long moment before Seth starts up with the sudden question, "How do you do it?"

John furrows his brow in confusion. "Excuse me? How do I do what?"

Seth turns tired dull eyes to him and repeats, "How do you do it? How could you hold that belt for so long and not…" he tries to choose his words carefully. "Not let it crush you?"

Cena had held the belt longer than anyone. Twelve times he'd tangoed with the title, twelve times more than Seth, and twelve times stronger than the younger champions own will. It was like the belt chose who it wanted to eat alive and who it didn't. And right now, it probably thought that Seth was the tastiest morsel it ever had.

John shrugs. "Take it one day at a time. Don't run headfirst into it, or it'll overwhelm you." He pauses and regards Seth with a look that turns suspicious, then knowing, then concerned in under point two seconds. "And I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that's already happened to you."

"I don't know what else to do," Seth murmured half to himself, rubbing his hands over his face. "I thought…I didn't…" he sighs, and suddenly, slumping with his back against the wall, he looks much older than twenty-nine. John watches him curiously, then takes a cautionary step towards him. "What did you think?"

"I –what?"

"You said 'I thought.' What did you think? That it would be easy being champ?"

Seth actually looks offended.

"No! I knew that it was gonna work me to death to get that belt. That's not…I just didn't think it would be like this."

"Miserable and lonely?" John oh-so-helpfully fills in.

"And cold."

John looks thoughtful at that. "You know, I don't think your issue is with the belt, Seth," he says after a long moment of thin silence between them. Seth raises an eyebrow in question.

"Well, not completely. Yeah, it has something to do with it, but I think your problem is deeper than that." John waits, looks expectant like Seth could read his mind and figure out the answer from that. When he doesn't, John answers for him.

"Your problem is guilt."

* * *

Seth has a match later that night.

It's terrible.

He thinks that he probably should have talked to John after the match, because during, all he can think about is the other man's words, rattling around in his head like rattlesnake tails everytime he gets punched in the head. And of course, he forgot to eat something to at least have a little energy to move around quicker. He'd moved slower than Mae Young in that ring, god rest her soul.

Guilt.

Fucking guilt.

Seth scowled in the empty hallway. This wasn't a little girl's fairy tale, where the hero finds out that all he needs to succeed is to believe in himself. Let Bo Dallas handle that kiddie shit. How could guilt be the reason why Seth was so twitchy and crazy-looking? John had so kindly explained it to him earlier in the room; it still makes him grimace.

 _Seth looks unimpressed. "What?" he asks with a voice so flat that John could probably lay a rug on it._

" _You heard me. The reason why it feels like the world is against you, why it feels like you're suffocating in that thing," John gestures at the belt like it's a panicky wild animal, "is because you feel guilty about the way you got it."_

 _Seth just stares at him. John takes that as his cue to continue._

" _I know you loved those boys. Reigns and Ambrose; everyone and their blind grandmothers could see that. And when you broke them –and you did, believe me- it didn't feel so bad. You rode your adrenaline high for as long as it would take you, and then you woke up and saw the blood on the floor."_

 _Seth tries his hardest not to let the panic show, and John tells him, "I'll be honest with you, when you started coming out week after week, talking about how you hated their guts and all that complete and utter bullshit-"_

 _Seth tries to interject here, but John's voice bulldozes right over him._

" _It really got under my skin. I think it did for a lot of other people, too." And there, he actually looked disappointed._

" _You were such a team-player. You were a bright kid who worked hard, blazed through the indies to FCW, then raised some hell on the main roster. You worked hard, you lived for those two; hell, you guys were closer than brothers. I'd hear people say that you guys were so in sync with each other that it was like you all shared one mind in three bodies. You weren't…" John reaches out, and it startles Seth to near cardiac arrest when he suddenly feels the pads of John's fingertips against his left eye, brushing against the dark circles. "You weren't this."_

 _Seth holds absolutely still while John has his hands on him, staring at him like a deer in headlights. John sighs, deep and slow, and retracts his hand, carrying what little warmth and closure Seth had found in the little touch with him._

" _You need to come clean, kid," rumbles John. He shakes his head. "You need to do whatever you need to do to make things right with your boys and get rid of this guilt. I've seen what happens to people who get caught up and crushed under that stuff; you look like you're on the fast track towards it."_

 _Seth blinks. John is suddenly patting him on his shoulder, and then heading for the door, and Seth can only register it all in slow motion._

 _John, one hand on the door, turns back to him, a hint of concern in the old champ's eyes. He says, "Take care of yourself, Seth," and then he's gone._

* * *

For the third time since he'd stepped out of the ring, Seth prods around his mouth with his tongue, searching for any loose teeth and thankfully finding none. In hindsight –there it was again- some people might say that mouthing off to the man you were supposed to face later on in the night was a bad fucking idea. Seth didn't regret doing his best to shut Orton up in the hallway before their match. It only stood to make the night a little bit sweeter that at least _something_ went right.

He all but falls through the door of his locker room, catching himself before he not-so-elegantly faceplants on the tiled linoleum floor, and shuffles towards the shower. Normally, a shower would've come after he arrived at the hotel, but since the hot water was available here and now and Seth was honestly to stiff and sore to even try to drive himself anywhere, the groudy shower stall at the arena would have to do.

Seth turns the hot water knob as far as it will go and wanders back out into the main area, rolling his shoulder the whole way. He'd landed on it weird when he'd suicide-dived at Randy through the ropes, and now, man, did it hurt like a bitch.

Seth grabs his bag with his clothes and catapults himself back into the shower, scrubs himself pink in the hot water. His fingertips have turned wrinkly and pruny by the time he decides he should leave, and steam rises like ghostly tendrils from his skin. He dries off and throws on some jeans –he frowns at how loose the jeans feel around his legs- the last few drops of hot water from the shower dribble down his back from the ends of his hair, tiny bubbles of warm comfort to-go.

He's pretty sure his heart has stopped when he finds Dean sitting on the bench in the middle of the room, suddenly screaming, what look like potato chips flying up from the plate in his hands.

"Jesus," he says quieter now, ignoring Seth panting in the doorway, one hand pressed over his chest, "you look like a train wreck."

Seth wonders if it's possible to scare someone dizzy. The room is moving when it shouldn't be.

Dean doesn't seem to notice. He offers the plate to Seth, holding it forward like he's attempting to feed a wild animal. "Got you a sandwich; you look like you need it," he says. Seth is pretty sure he does; he probably looks like a monster with his raccoon eyes and dark hair hanging in his eyes like black vines. It's kind of sad that his stomach has since stopped growling at the scent of food. It was probably after the first week that Seth had succumbed to…whatever this was. A _guilt-trip_ , according to John Cena.

"Thanks. Why?" Seth asks. He doesn't make a move to get the plate of chips and sandwich. Dean rolls his eyes.

"I just told you why, you ungrateful fuck."

Seth stares at him, at a loss for how to respond. In the end, he shakes his head. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm fine."

Dean doesn't look the least bit convinced. He doesn't even have the decency to hide how unconvinced he is. He just looks at Seth like he's the dumbest man on the planet. Maybe he is.

"You look like a skinned cat," Dean deadpans. "It doesn't even look like your jeans are painted on anymore."

Seth rolls his eyes, immediately regrets it.

"If you don't come over here and eat and pass out on the floor, I'm not dragging your ass home. I'll leave you here for the janitors to find," Dean says, completely monotone so that it actually occurs to Seth that he very well might.

Seth snorts and runs the towel over his wet hair quickly. "I won't pass out. It's not like I've been starving in a hole for three weeks."

"May as well have been," Dean chirps. "I haven't seen you this small since we were in FCW. You're what, thirty pounds lighter? You're like a little eighty pound girl."

Seth subconsciously brings his hand up to his left arm and squeezes. It wasn't like he hadn't seen himself in the mirror lately. He knew he had lost some weight; if the week of Battleground hadn't been an easy week as far as diet was concerned, the weeks after were hell on earth. But the only thing he can force himself to say is, "I'm not a fucking eighty pound chick. I just haven't been all that hungry lately."

Half-truth, but Dean didn't need to know that. It felt as though there was a giant leech on his back, eating away at his health and livelihood, but Dean didn't need to know that. He hadn't had a full eight hours sleep since Hunter and Stephanie had revealed who Seth's Battleground opponent would be, but Dean didn't need to know that.

It just didn't make sense. Seth had asked if Dean would be there with him almost three weeks ago, yet here he was pushing him away, struggling to find a way out. Roman had been the last piece of the puzzle. If he had been on Seth's side as well, maybe he wouldn't be running around in circles trying to come up with a different way to get out of this chasm he'd dug himself into.

A Shield revival just wasn't in the cards. And Seth was out of time.

He was never getting out of there. He was going to stay like this, a dead man walking, forever because he couldn't make things right. The Architect couldn't fix things this time.

And it was staggering.

"Please just eat the sandwich," Dean sighs, shaking the plate at Seth. "I already went through the trouble of making it for you, the least you could do is take a few bites of it."

"Those sandwiches are premade, Dean," Seth replies tiredly. "They come from catering like that."

"Yeah, well, it was the last one and I had to fight Big Show for it, so you're swallowing this fucking thing even if I have to cram it down your throat by myself."

Seth gives him a sidelong glare, slips a shirt over his head, and eventually comes to sit beside Dean on the bench.

Dean hands him the plate with a smirk that makes Seth want to tip the plate over his blonde head, and asks, "Thirsty?"

"No."

"Have fun today at work?"

"Been better."

"Make any new friends."

"No, _mom_."

Dean just laughs at that and stops asking questions. Seth just kind of stares at his sandwich, pokes at a chip with his forefinger hard enough to crack it in half.

"Talk to Roman lately?"

Any appetite that Seth might've had from interrogating the ham sandwich on his plate is now gone. He shakes his head. "Nope. He doesn't come around me much. He's always lurking behind you like a shadow."

Dean scratches his jaw. "Huh. Hadn't noticed."

Seth raises an eyebrow. "Really?" Dean wasn't exactly oblivious; he noticed a lot of things. "How did you not realize a six-foot-six giant was following you around twenty-four seven?"

"Better things to do, I guess."

Seth stares at his plate again. Dean sinks back into another round of awkward silence, lets Seth watch his food like it might do tricks and flips across the plate.

"He really hates me, huh?"

Dean quirks an eyebrow, but otherwise his expression doesn't change. Seth doesn't look at him. "Really hates my guts."

"Who, Rome?" Dean says idly, scratching at his jaw again. He has stubble, Seth notices for some reason. He needs to shave. "Nah, he's just sore about the whole 'you betrayed us for a belt' thing. He'll warm up eventually."

"That's not how that works!"

Dean finally turns to looks at Seth, who has almost no flame in his eyes. "You don't just get over something like that. How the hell did you do it so easily? You don't trust anyone as far as you can throw them, yet here you are trying to make sure I eat and not punching me in my throat or something! Why are you even here? Why do you keep taunting me?"

Dean actually looks confused. "What the hell are you talking about? Taunting you? What?"

"Why aren't you on Roman's side?" Seth asks, sounding tired and almost like he's begging Dean to tell him the truth. He should have known.

"Why are you here reminding me of how I screwed up? So close, but so fucking far away?"

"I told you why I'm here," Dean says simply. He shrugs. "You're blood. You're the little brother. You'll be the little brother even when you're sixty and gray, whether you like it or not. You're in this for life."

Seth stares at him for a long time. Dean nods once. Twice. Trying to put some reassurance behind it. Seth sighs and buries his face in his hands.

"I'm tired," he mumbles. He shakes his head. "He's never gonna believe me."

There's a beat of silence that passes. Dean almost thinks that Seth has fallen asleep, and Seth wonders if Dean has up and gone, silent like a ghost.

"And why is that?"

Seth doesn't raise his head, but he answers almost immediately. "Why is what?"

He feels Dean's hand around his neck, not menacing or threatening. Friendly.

"Rome's not a hateful guy," he says. "He's the big brother. He's biologically incapable of hating his little brothers. How do you think I got away with so much of the shit I pulled without so much as a few days of silent treatment?"

Seth snorts. "You probably threatened him with thumbtacks and drunken escapades."

"Because we're brothers, smartass. And brothers don't hate brothers" corrects Dean.

They fall back into the increasingly familiar silence, and then Seth says, "He told me he loved me." After a moment, he adds, "Past tense, though."

Maybe it's just him slipping into sleep, but he feels Dean shift next to him and a hand on his ribcage, pulling.

"Did he now?"

"Used to," Seth mumbles. "Not anymore."

Dean says something quiet, something in reply to Seth's prior statement, but it falls on deaf ears. When he wakes up again, he doesn't even realize that he'd passed out on the bench next to Dean, who was trying to tell him something he probably should've kept to himself.

* * *

Dean waits for a response.

He waits four minutes. It's five minutes now, when he finally realizes that Seth isn't even awake anymore. He sighs, slightly annoyed with him.

"Told you," he grumbles to no one in particular. "Dumb kid."

Seth hadn't touched his sandwich. He'd probably watched it long enough to make friends with it, so Dean takes a napkin and wraps it up inside, sticks it in a vacant pocket in Seth's bag. He'll leave it for him to eat later, when he wakes up again.

Maybe it's the big brother in him that makes him sorta sad to see his little brother so low that he wasn't even taking care of himself like he used to. Seth used to treat his body like something worthwhile. So it was a jarring sight to see him almost as thin as he was when he was first starting to wrestle, and having him black out from not even bothering to eat. Dean was almost scared to think that the last time Seth had eaten had been the night of Summerslam.

The fucking fruit cup.

Had he been eating before then? He had been pretty jittery through the entire week leading up to Summerslam. Probably hadn't been sleeping well either. He was a wreck.

Dean manages –with little effort with Seth being so much lighter now- to haul Seth up and onto his shoulders, then grabs his bag in one hand, and shuffles them both out into the hallway.

He makes it all the way to the parking lot before Seth wakes up. He moves a little in his sleep, making a small sound that sounds like confusion, and grunts what sounds vaguely like Dean's name.

"Yeah, it's me. Shut the hell up and go back to sleep," Dean snaps at him, though there's hardly any bite to it. He dumps Seth in the passenger seat of his rental and tosses his stuff in the back, wincing at how the lights in the lot shine down on Seth's pallid face and illuminate the dark circles under his eyes. Dean sits in the drivers' seat and watches him.

Then he shakes his head and starts the engine. Why was he doing this to himself? Dean was there for him; he knew that. He'd _told_ him that. He had been giving it his all to bring the Seth he knew back, trying to stop the light in his eyes from going out. Lately it seemed like he was failing. Seth was still falling hard.

Seth's groggy voice startles Dean when it suddenly pipes up in the darkness. "Thought you said you'd leave me for th'janitors t'find?"

His voice is slurry and tired and weak; three words that should never be used to describe Seth Rollins. Dean shakes his head.

"Changed my mind."

Seth's eyes haven't opened. He gives a slight incline of his head, which may have just been a result of the car bumping across the road and not a real nod, and murmurs, "yeah."

Dean doesn't hear anything else from him. Glancing over, he sees Seth leaning his head against the window, breathing evenly and looking like death warmed over. His wrist is turned up –even in the dark Dean knows the trail of the ink in his skin better than anything. A piece of a burning page, 'forever' marked across it. It was so…Seth. The old Seth. The Seth he was giving it his last to rediscover.

Falling hard for.

Maybe.

(Past tense)

Dean totes Seth up to his room like a koala on his back and doesn't even mind how cold Seth's hands are when he finally crawls into bed and finds ten freezing fingers pressed almost immediately against his bare back.

* * *

Dean wakes up and Seth is gone.

He checks the bathroom. No one.

He checks the refrigerator- he'd left Seth's uneaten sandwich inside the night before. Still wrapped in the napkin, it's the only thing of Seth's left in the room. Dean lets the door slam shut, cursing inwardly. Well.

It's only now that he notices the second bed is empty and, when he wanders over to investigate, cold. Roman's been gone for a while now too. Dean screws his eyes shut so tightly that he sees stars on the backs of his eyelids, and falls back into bed.

* * *

Seth wakes up next to Dean, which is…odd.

He doesn't remember falling asleep, and he doesn't quite understand why he feels so much like a dead leaf: lifeless, tired and…crinkly. Like the slightest sudden movement would snap off pieces of him, breaking off and being carried away by the wind.

Without his usual grace, it's a risky struggle to wiggle his way out of bed without waking Dean up. There's not too much to worry about; Dean slept like the dead usually. But on the off chance that Seth fucked up monumentally and Dean woke up, he took his time, moving in small increments. He manages to shimmy awkwardly off the bed and onto the floor where he immediately regrets standing upright, nearly falling backwards as his head spins like top.

Vertigo aside, he stumbles like a drunken elephant towards the direction of the door, trying his best to tiptoe across the carpet, hip checks the table on one side of the room and swears in a whisper scream. Seth freezes for a moment, his heartbeat loud in his ears. No noise. He hadn't made that much noise, right?

"Seth?"

Seth trips and falls over something heavy in the middle of the floor. Graceful.

"Oh," comes the voice from the darkness again, sounding more sleepy than annoyed, "it's you." Seth recognizes Roman's deep timbre and immediately knows he has achieved maximum fuck up.

"What are you doing here?"

Seth can't seem to find his voice. "I, um…I…"

He hears the rustle of sheets and the sound of a body moving, and almost instantly the words are forced out of him.

"I was leaving."

He hears footsteps now and is kind of freaking out, but doesn't have the energy to really do so. So he just stays rooted to the spot and waits until he feels Roman sidle right up next to him. "How'd you get in?" Roman asks. He's really close; Seth can feel the vibrations from his voice in his chest.

"I, um…I think…Dean?"

Roman makes an affirmative noise and remains quiet. He's still next to Seth, and Seth wonders if he can see him in the dark, if he's looking at him with sleepy disdain on his face. Maybe.

Roman grabs Seth's arm, careful but firm this time, and walks him in the right direction to the door. Seth expects him to throw him out into the hallway and slam the door closed again, but Roman slips out with him, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm.

He jerks his head further down the hall and starts down it silently. Seth follows behind like a quiet, clumsy shadow.

Roman doesn't speak to him.

Is it just Seth or are the hallways in this hotel really labyrinthian? Like, he might get lost in here if he didn't have someone to follow. It felt like they had been walking for almost ten minutes already with no sign of the destination, but maybe that was just Seth running on a few hours' sleep and his sense of direction was still foggy.

Eventually, a little beacon of light shines from a dim alcove further down the hall.

A vending machine.

Roman approaches it and looks at its sides, left and right, up, down. He catches Seth watching, curious and half-awake, gives him what looks like a smirk. "Check this out," he rumbles, and Seth blinks, like he can't believe Roman was actually addressing him.

Roman moves to one side of the drink machine, which looks decrepit and like it hadn't seen a replacement since the 90s, and pauses, legs braced like he might take off sprinting. And he does, but he doesn't get very far. He rams his shoulder into the side of the big machine, startles Seth half to death with the loud noise, and goes for one more time.

"Are you crazy?" Seth whispers, arms still drawn up in protective instinct. Roman nods towards the machine's trough. There's a thumping noise, a shudder from the machine, a heavy sounding _thunk_ , and suddenly Roman is leaning down and pulling a pair of coke bottles out from the little door. He tosses one to Seth and cracks open the other, taking a long sip while Seth stares at him wide eyed.

"Cesaro and Dean showed me," Roman explains with an easy shrug. "The machine ate Ziggler's dollar, so while they were shaking the machine around to get it loose, they figured out that if you hit it hard enough it gives you free cokes."

Seth grins softly at that. "Of course Dean would know how to steal shit from a vending machine."

"I think the dispenser's broken in there," Roman adds idly. Seth nods and rakes his fingers across the grooves in the bottle cap.

Roman takes another sip, but Seth can feel him watching him. "Thanks for the drink," he says quietly.

"How'd Dean find you?"

Seth looks up. "He just walked into my locker room and…" Seth shrugged. Roman nods, understanding the silent gesture. Sometimes, with Dean, you could only shrug. It was a whole lot easier than trying to explain. "What'd he want?"

What was this, an interrogation?

"He brought me a sandwich."

Roman nods again. "You look like you needed it." When he looks back at Seth, his grey eyes seem softer. Maybe it's from sleep.

His gaze feels tangible, poking at Seth's ribs and prodding at the circles under his eyes. Seth almost brings up his arm to cover himself up, but forces himself to stop.

"You look like you're nineteen again."

Wow, that was unexpected. Seth raises an eyebrow.

"Young and handsome as fuck?" he asks, totally kidding. Roman gives him an ' _oh, please'_ kind of look.

"Skinny and like a raccoon," he corrects. "Didn't you wear eyeliner for a bit in the indies? You were a pale, skinny kid with raccoon eyes and none of those struggling blonde strands in your hair. No beard either," Roman reminisces. He looks thoughtful, wandering down memory lane it seems. "Total baby face. At least then you looked like you were actually healthy and working your way up to being a great athlete instead of a starving artist."

The softness in his eyes looks a lot like concern, and Seth pretends that it isn't and it doesn't hurt.

"When was the last time you ate?" Roman asks him. Seth was already tired of hearing that question.

"I saw you," says Roman, "out in the ring. You looked like you were gonna throw up all over the mat. When was the last time you ate? Hell, when was the last time you slept?"

Seth doesn't know the exact date. He does know that it's been so long that he doesn't dare tell Roman.

"The locker room, I guess?" he replies slowly. "I remember talking to Dean and then I woke up and I was in your room."

Roman rolls his eyes. "Unbelievable."

And then they're stomping back down the hall, Seth's arm back in Roman's clutches. Maybe he isn't intentionally trying to hurt him, but he's pretty sure the big Samoan is leaving more bruises. They backtrack through the labyrinth and end up back at the room, sneaking in with a little less curtesy and quiet than remotely polite. Roman sits Seth down on the floor and bustles around the room.

Seth listens to him moving, and his still groggy mind entertains the thought that Roman is actually part bat. That's the only way he's able to maneuver around the completely dark room without tripping over Seth or knocking something over, because Seth sure as hell can't see anything.

The light from the refrigerator lights up a small corner of the darkness, and Seth can see the illuminated outline of Roman's face as he squints into the icebox. Then he reaches in and grabs something and the light is gone. A second passes and something is dropped in front of Seth.

He guesses Roman has taken up the position of sentinel right in front of him too, because his voice is very close when he says, "eat."

Seth waits a moment, then feels around the floor for whatever it was Roman had thrown at him. It's cold. Feels like a napkin. Unwrapping it as best he can in pitch black, Seth discovers a ham sandwich inside. It's the same one from the locker room. Dean must have wrapped it up for him to eat later.

Even though he can't see him, Seth is pretty sure that the heavy feeling burning holes into his forehead is Roman watching him expectantly, so to appease him, he takes a tentative bite of the sandwich and stupidly looks up to see if Roman is still eyeing him like a hawk.

He doesn't stop feeling like there's a burning sensation between his eyes until he finishes the first half of the sandwich and says, "I ate half."

"You can't eat the rest?"

"Nope."

"Okay."

"I'm tired."

"Okay."

Roman grabs his arm (again) and helps Seth to his feet. Wraps the other half of the sandwich up and replaces it in the fridge. Offers to walk him to his hotel room, since the kid is already swaying on his own two feet.

They manage their way down the hall and up to the next floor. Seth gets his key in the door, turns on a lamp, and almost slips on the rug in the bathroom when he runs inside and pukes into the toilet.

Roman swears somewhere behind him, muttering something about how he should've given Seth something lighter than a sandwich, like toast or something, wraps an arm around Seth's ribs while he empties what little he had in his stomach into the toilet.

He helps Seth clean up afterwords, and by that time, Dean has already woken up and is confused downstairs, and Roman is wondering why Seth let himself rot away like this, and if its right for him to feel guilty about being the reason why the champion is wasting away on the bathroom floor.

* * *

When Seth wakes up sometime later that week, he decides, at eight o'clock in the morning that it's a good idea to poke the beast. God knows why; that catastrophic chat in the locker room the other day should've been enough to scare him straight, and why ruin the progress he'd made Monday night after Raw?

Well, Seth isn't stupid. He knows that Roman would probably eat him whole if he so much as glances at him from across the hotel lobby; at least he can't serve himself up as breakfast to the huge Samoan if he talks to him via text messaging. If Roman wants to rip him a new one, he'll have to find Seth first.

' _Looking for a title shot?_ ' he types.

Seth barely even locks his phone before a reply comes shooting back full force.

' **No**.'

' _Ryback is easy-picking. go for the left leg; he had staph infection in that one. bet it still stings like a bitch_.'

It's only now occurred to Seth that he still has Roman's number saved inside his contact list. Of course, he knew the digits by heart, but still. He wonders if Roman still has his number saved too. Does he know that its Seth texting him? Or is he just answering in general, doesn't care who's asking?

' **you're low**.'

Seth persists. _'it's the intercontinental belt. you could_ _make it relevant again; evryone likes_ _u_.'

The reply returns much slower this time, and when it arrives, Seth can sense the hesitation.

' **fuck off seth**.'

Oh.

So he does know who it is.

Against his better judgement, Seth types back, ' _you still have my number_?'

There's no hesitation this time around when Roman snaps back, all venom and sick self-pride at his own smart-aleckyness, ' **not anymore**.'

NUMBER BLOCKED

Seth rolls his eyes.

* * *

Either fucking way, come Monday, Roman challenges Ryback on Raw in an open challenge for the Intercontinental championship. Goades him into it really –such an underhanded tactic to compare his bravery to John Cena's willingness to offer the open challenges week after week.

Left leg down (just like Seth said), right hand raised.

Roman takes the win.

* * *

Hunter is livid.

His wife is a dragon.

Seth just watches it like a cloud in the breeze.

Mom and dad are pissed because Roman stole the title from Ryback. They don't want him gaining any momentum, and a belt around his waist would give him that, enough to thrust him a little higher up the escheladder, and now they're worried.

Worried that he'll blaze through the ranks and come after the company title. Because if he's got it, he could wreck everything the Authority had worked for up until this point, and that was _not_ best for business.

While Stephanie spews fire and Hunter shoots lightning from his eyes, Seth spends their little tirade pondering what else he can mess up. He had the company belt, Roman had the Intercontinental…the tag team belts were always open. Granted it might be awkward for any one of them to team up long enough to win the belts, but it would a lot less awkward to have Dean and Roman pair up than either of them with Seth. Come Summerslam, he'd get a chance for the United States belt as well; was it weird to take a belt from a man he'd just had a heart-to-heart with a week ago?

Sacrifices had to be made; John could thank him later when the Authority was knocked down and out of power anyway.

And well now, that only left the one thing.

"What are you doing up there?"

Seth looked up from his little plastic cup of ranch and took the half-nibbled carrot stick out from between his teeth. "Snackin'."

Roman looked vaguely impressed. "So I see you're eating now. That's all fine and good, but you and I need to talk."

Seth hummed low in his chest and eventually eased his way down from the stack of equipment boxes with a bit of his old grace, only to be met with an arm wrapped around his neck and an impressively tight headlock.

"What are you playing at?" Roman asks calmly, like Seth isn't freaking out right next to him. Seth slaps at Roman's forearm. "Nothing; tap out, tap out!"

"Why'd you tell me to challenge Ryback?" continues Roman with his impromptu interrogation. Some passing stage hands have started to slow down and stare, only to speed up again and pretend they didn't see anything. "You trying to set me up?"

"Fuck, no," Seth grunts trying to twist his way out of Roman's grip. "What sense would having you winning the title and double-crossing you again make?"

"Triple-crossing."

"Rome, tap out. I give," Seth has started digging his elbow into Roman's side, "I promise, I'm not lying. Why are you so violent all of a sudden?"

Roman loosens his grip and shakes out his arms. "You could've broken that hold if you weren't a stringbean now. And I figure the only way to make sure you don't lie again is to make you squirm."

Seth rubs at his neck gingerly. "I'm not a stringbean. And terrorizing the innocent isn't going to get you any answers."

"I wasn't terrorizing the innocent. I was terrorizing you."

"And I'm not being shady," Seth adds, smoothing his t-shirt back down. "I'm not with them anymore."

Roman glances down the hall, then looks back at Seth. He nods at a quiet corner away from view and moves there. "What do you mean?"

A tiny spark of hope ignites in Seth, and he prays that he can choose his words correctly and make Roman see the truth. He couldn't help the overwhelming sense that this was his last shot.

"I'm trying to destroy the Authority." It sounds so strange to hear it being said out loud. It's…liberating. "I'm trying to get out and bring it down from the inside. I," Seth pauses and takes a breath. Here we go. "You know whoever holds the WWE heavyweight belt has a tight grip on the way things turn out here; almost as tight as the Authority. I could leave them as is now, but if I do, they'll just pass it on to someone in their circle- I'm thinking Owens since he's Hunter's newest pet project."

"What does me holding the Intercontinental belt have to do with it," Roman asks.

"I'm getting to that. I, um…let's say I'm a double-agent. I only actually came up with the idea after Dean…talked me into it. He gave me the basis of the idea, and I built on it. He's in on it too, obviously, but the plan is…" Seth hums and searches for words like he has a thesaurus stored away in his head. "Not to reform the Shield per say-" he winces when Roman's eye twitches.

"But I wanted you guys by my side for this. We don't have to be a group if you don't trust me enough to be that close again, but I…there's no one else I'd have asked."

Roman's steely grey eyes slide over Seth's face, and he nods slowly. "And the belts?"

"I've got the company title. Automatically that gives us some ground to work on. And you've got the intercontinental now, which means we're two titles in the running. If we can get all five belts between us –you, me and Dean- then we've got all the cards. We've got the same amount of power as Stephanie and Trips."

Roman raises a skeptical eyebrow. "And you're sure this'll work?"

Seth nods. "When you won the Intercontinental title, they were pissed. Didn't you ever wonder why they stopped putting you in the title picture?"

"I thought it was because of you."

Seth makes a noise in the back of his throat, like disgust. "No. You're one of the most over guys in the company. If you get even a little momentum behind you with the fans and the titles, you're the best candidate for a total annihilation of the title belts. You could destroy the Authority's pull. You proved to be the biggest threat, not me. Now that you've gone and fucked up their plans, they're bound to trip up at some point. And if we can get Dean in the title picture too, that'll really ruffle some feathers."

Roman nods thoughtfully, seeming to mull the plan over. "They know what hurts us most. They could just use that against us and take the titles back. We're only human," he settles on eventually.

Seth sighs and runs his hand through his hair. "Yeah, I know that part. I was working on that. I think it's just a risk in the scheme of things. That's their bargaining chip, but the belts are ours. Besides, you and Dean can watch each other's backs well enough; they can't kill both of you with one bullet."

"And what about you?"

Seth shrugs. "Don't worry about me. They can't hurt me."

Roman doesn't look impressed. "You aren't invincible, Seth."

Seth shakes his head, and for a moment, Roman swears he sees his eyes turn dull. "I didn't say that. I just said that they can't hurt me."

Roman narrows his eyes, like he might be on the brink of understanding a deeper meaning in Seth's words, but Seth's already begun speaking again.

"The only thing that's left is you."

Roman raises an eyebrow.

"I need to know if I have you on this. If you don't want to do it for me, okay. Do it for everyone else the Authority has fucked over. Do it for your best friend," Seth insists.

Roman can't really bring himself to look Seth in the eye, even though he knows that if he did, he would find them searching his own, looking for an answer. He wonders if he's holding his breath too.

He sighs. "Alright. I'm in."

 _But not because of you._

"So what's next?"

Seth looks almost like a kid in a candy store, all too excited to answer him.

"Summerslam."

* * *

hi. send me prompts and stuff so that im not bored when im supposed to be listening to my english lit lectures.

pls help me stave off boredom at:

and let me know if you want to keep going. its literally all up to you guys if this keeps going. i could leave it anywhere.


	4. Chapter 4

The thing about Seth was that he had a habit of isolating himself from everyone else when he really got to thinking. He would come up with an idea and then you wouldn't see him for a few days, and then when you looked for him, it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Dean used to joke that if you wanted to find him, you could always check for signs of smoke anywhere; the gears in Seth's head would be turning so quickly that the stuff would billow from his ears or something.

So here it was, two days after the confrontation with Roman in the hallway, and Seth was nowhere to be found.

"I always hated when he did that," the Samoan grumbles. Mostly it was just him hating to be kept in the dark, more than actual worry for Seth's wellbeing wherever he was. And it wasn't like he could just call the kid up and ask him where he was; Seth didn't answer his phone at all when he was off being mysterious and sage-like, and part of Roman still didn't like him enough to give him even the slightest satisfaction of receiving a call asking of his whereabouts.

Dean nonchalantly shrugs him off though. "At least he's being productive," he offers, steadily flipping through television channels. Roman grunts, eyes darkening quickly. "Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. He's being productive, but with who?"

Dean glances over at him and finally stops punching the remote's 'channel up' button. Roman feels his friend watching, finally looks over to find unimpressed blue eyes boring into him.

"What?"

"C'mon, man, don't be like that," Dean says.

Roman rolls his eyes and throws his hands into the air. "What, you're saying you trust him now?"

"I'm willing to give him the benefit of a doubt," Dean clarifies. Honestly, you would think he had forgotten how hard the betrayal had been on himself as well as Roman, the way he was just brushing shit off like that.

"You know him," Dean continues, muttering now, like he's talking to himself instead of Roman.

Roman snorts. "I thought I did."

"You know him," Dean repeats with a firmness, "well enough to know that he wouldn't half kill himself for show."

If Roman rolls his eyes anymore, they'll probably pop right out of his skull. "Please. He'd do a lot of things for show. He'd probably cut off his left hand to get sympathy from someone."

"Rome."

"What?"

Dean is staring at him with hard glass eyes now. "He passed out and I had to carry him back to the hotel."

"Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for him?"

"You know how he is about his body. He hasn't been eating for weeks. Something's wrong with him."

"Why are you throwing yourself so heavily into this?" Roman demands. He's beyond annoyed right now, both with Seth and Dean.

"I've been waiting," Dean murmurs. He trails off and then returns with a stronger resolution, "I've been waiting for the old Seth, and I can see it in him now after all this time. I'm not about to lose him; if I have to grab him and wrap my hands around his throat just to make sure he stays put, if I have to hold him for so long that we melt together, if I have to stand on my fucking head to see him smile like he used to."

And something makes sense to Roman. It's not quite what Dean was trying to tell him, but he understands something now. "You sure are fighting awfully hard for him," he says slowly.

Dean doesn't say anything, shakes his head. He hasn't seemed to pick up on the fact that Roman knows something he doesn't.

So Roman keeps the game up a little longer. "Want to tell me why?"

Dean meets him cold. "A while ago, wouldn't you have done the same fucking thing?"

"But why you? You aren't exactly the guy with the best track record for trust."

Dean is quiet for so long that Roman wonders if he's just begun ignoring him. He almost decides to just ask the question head on, but Dean eventually mutters something so low that Roman barely even hears it.

"We're brothers."

Well, yeah, there's that but… 

* * *

A blind man could see that Roman Reigns was opposed to the whole idea of Dean having feelings for Seth. He knew damn well that Dean had a thing for Seth; it was pretty obvious. Maybe it was because he knew him so well. He was still learning; Dean was like a baby, in the way that he didn't come with a manual. You had to learn on the job.

But there was always a moment in time, a little quirk of the lips or arc of electricity in his eyes that gave away exactly what Dean was thinking, even if he didn't really realize it himself. When he saw Seth, his eyes went kind of quiet. His smile was quiet. He was quiet. Everything about the explosive man was near silent, like he was content to just watch Seth, scared that if he was too loud, he'd shatter everything around them.

Sometimes Roman went so far as to wonder sometimes if the only reason Dean had accepted Seth again so quickly was because _he_ was trying to get in his good graces. It should be the other way around, damn it.

Seth resurfaces in time for the next show.

He does a pretty good job of staying out of their way for the majority of the night, but around the corner, on the way back from catering, Roman walks past a mostly quiet hallway –'mostly quiet' because the easily recognizable low rumble of John Cena reaches his ears. Roman pauses, noticing the two figures standing in the hall, talking quietly with little gestures with their hands. Even without the blonde in his hair, Roman still recognizes the build of one Seth Rollins, even if it is a bit smaller than usual, standing in front of the superman himself.

It's odd enough to see the two rivals actually talking to each other and not punching one another in the face, but things kind of cross over from pretty odd to pretty weird in a matter of moments. Seth actually cracks a smile at John, which is returned at almost full force, and the two continue talking in hushed voices.

And when did Seth start letting John Cena of all people touch him?

The former champ has his hand pressed against the side of Seth's face, looking at him with something Roman can't really explain. He says something –what, Roman doesn't know- and grins, nodding his head in satisfaction. He retracts his hand then and moves it down Seth's arm, gives him a friendly punch in the shoulder after the moment lingers on.

Roman moves on after that. It really isn't his business, and he really doesn't care who Seth chooses to hang out with so long as it doesn't pose an issue to Roman himself.

Curious, though.

* * *

"So he's going after the United States belt next, eh?"

Dean nods his head in approval as he watches the monitor. "Greedy little shit. Maybe I wanted to win that one, huh? Seein' as how you got the Intercontinental an' all. I feel left out."

Roman shrugs, staring straight ahead and not really watching whatever it was Seth was doing on the monitor. "We can see about gettin' you the Diva's title, if that makes you feel any better."

He gets a dig in the arm for his trouble.

"Well, if it isn't the superman," Dean suddenly barks out at something across the room. Roman looks up and grimaces. Cena.

"Fair warning, Seth's comin' for your belt," Dean continues, leaning back in his chair with an elbow on the back rest. John, in his bright orange traffic cone t-shirt, sidles on up next to them, gazing up at the monitor.

"Yeah? Well, good luck to him. He's gonna need it," says John. Something about that makes Roman cringe.

"Speaking of which, how are things?"

Dean quirks an eyebrow.

"What? What things?"

John shrugs. "I haven't seen the two of you trying to tear off a piece of Rollins at all recently. Though, you guys have had your hands pretty full with the Wyatt's, eh?"

Dean shrugs. "Seth's not exactly the biggest threat at the moment. We got bigger things to worry about than some spoiled brat. Besides, Brock was doin' a pretty good job of ripping the kid a new one anyway."

"Nice vacation, huh?"

"Been fun," Dean nods offhandedly. "But now he's your problem. He's coming after that US title of yours; when it comes time to scuffle boots, give 'em hell for us, got it?"

John tilts his head to one side, and then he smirks. Like a smug little shit. 

* * *

Seth is talking to John again after the show.

From the looks of it, he's already packed his gear up and taken a shower, now standing in the hall in a hoodie and jeans that still look a little loose on his body.

They don't speak loudly, stay off to the side so that people can keep walking around them, though there aren't that many stragglers roaming the halls now; the show's been over for at least an hour.

Unlike earlier, Seth and John aren't using their hands to communicate: Seth's are shoved in the front pockets of his hoodie, John's hidden within the crooks of his folded arms. Whatever they're talking about, it's got nothing to do with being enemies. People's faces tended to contort when they were speaking to rivals; like they couldn't quite contain all of that venom in a straight face.

Seth isn't like that. He looks completely calm, like the two of them are just chatting about the weather or something.

John nods once Seth's stopped talking and offers him his hand. Seth shakes it, the hints of a small grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.

A blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.

Then they're parting ways, Seth heading back in Roman's direction, and John with his back to the both of them.

Seth shoulder's his bag and scratches at the back of his hooded head, probably on his way to the parking lot, stretching with one arm.

"So."

The sudden voice startles him. He glares up at Roman, lurking like a shadow around the corner. Dean is sitting next to him on top of a black equipment box, looking cool as a cucumber. It's Roman that looks like he has something he wants to say.

"When did you two get so sneaky?" Seth deadpans. He's kind of tired of being startled by his former teammates. It used to be the other way around.

Roman shrugs. "When did you and Cena get so chummy?"

Seth raises an eyebrow, but remains unimpressed. "Never took you for the jealous boyfriend type, big guy."

Maybe it's a little early to start jabbing at Roman like they used to, what with the wounds still so fresh. But damn it, he'd had enough of people looking over his shoulder like he was some kind of criminal that had to be watched every moment of the day. To appease the man, Seth sighs and clarifies, "I get that I'm on some type of probation from you guys, but really, this is a little much. Don't you have anything better to do than follow me around to make sure I'm not sleeping with the enemy? What did you do before when I was gone?"

"It wouldn't feel like probation," says Roman, looking at Seth with hard slate eyes, "if you hadn't turned on us like you did. You'll forgive us if your privacy isn't really a priority right now."

Seth's eyes go comically wide. "What –you mean Cena? You know that guy's squeaky clean; why would I be conspiring with him? That boyscout probably hasn't done a bad thing a day in his life; aside from that godawful Thuganomics thing. He wouldn't snitch."

"Still," this comes from Dean. "It is a little odd that you two are talking without beating each other up."

Seth rolls his eyes and frowns. "Isn't that what we're doing though?"

"You aren't trying to get off easy in the title match with are you?'

It kind of makes Roman smile at how disgusted Seth looks with the question. "Fuck off, you know I wouldn't do that. Why does it matter anyway? It's got nothing to do with any tricks up my sleeve or 'super secret alliances' or whatever. Maybe I'm trying to patch things up with a lot of people. Maybe I'm genuinely trying to make things right again."

"Don't tell me you're trying to make friends with John Cena of all people."

The hostility in Seth's eyes is not unlike that in Roman's.

"Maybe I am? I mean, it wouldn't hurt to be in the good graces of the guy who's been one of the most powerful faces in the company for over a fucking decade. But that's not even the point. That's not what's going on here. Cena's just…" Seth trails off, a little perturbed by the expression on Dean's face. It's weird, like he's seeing Seth, but not really. The thousand-yard stare, but to a lesser extent, and looks more like a death glare than a trip down memory lane.

Seth runs a hand over his hair, brushing the hood away, and sighs. "He wanted to tell me…may the best man win. Y'know. At Summerslam. No tricks or gimmicks. Just a clean fight."

Roman nods, still looking pensive. And for the life of him, Seth can't explain why Dean is still looking at him like he might tackle him to the floor.

"Are you two…" Roman gestures from Seth towards the opposite direction, where John had disappeared. He raises an eyebrow. It takes a moment for Seth to comprehend, still curious as to why Dean was being so weird. When it clicks, the look Seth gives Roman is packing enough venom to kill small animals.

"No. What the hell are you even thinking? Just because you see me talking to him, you automatically –he's dating Nikki, for fuck's sake!"

Roman shrugs, raises a hand in placation. "Hey, everyone knows he can't give her what she wants. Maybe they've both decided to move on."

Seth kneads his temples, already very annoyed, and it isn't even Dean's fault, which was a first.

"What do you want from me, guys?" he finally relents. "I'm telling you everything, and everything is true. What more do you want?"

"Where've you been?"

It surprises Seth when he hears Dean's voice. It isn't worried or angry. Just…curious.

"Thinking. Trying to put the pieces together in my head before I tried anything else out."

"And?"

Seth looks between the two former Shield members and hums.

"What are you guys doing tonight?"

* * *

Seth tosses a French fry at Dean and laughs when he catches it in his mouth halfway across the room.

"Two points."

Dean shakes his head. "Nah, it wasn't seasoned or anything. One point."

"Fuck you."

"If you ask nicely."

Seth rolls his eyes, catches sight of Roman doing the same thing from the other bed.

They've ordered room service and settled for camping out in Seth's hotel room for an hour or so while they eat and discuss the plan for Summerslam. So far the only thing that's happened has been an impromptu game of basketball with the French fries and an argument over the finer points of how to make a good barbecue chicken sandwich. Roman has occupied the vacant bed on the right side of the room and Dean has systematically made his way around the room from bed to floor to chair and finally back to floor again. Seth is halfway melted into the pillows at the head of his bed, somehow managing to curl all six feet of him into the corner like a bird in a nest. He's been grazing from a salad the entire time, one cucumber, one piece of lettuce, one tomato at a time.

"This is why you and Roman are going to be the ones to get the tag team belts; at least you won't talk to him like a horny teenage girl all the time," says Seth, popping a piece of lettuce into his mouth, generously slathered in ranch dressing. "It was already the obvious decision. I mean, no one would believe it if one of you guys tagged with me, and we just aren't quite there yet are we?"

He sounds far away around the end of the sentence, musingly.

"Still, it isn't like we've been close enough in each other's business to be believable enough to go after the tag team titles respectively," says Roman. "The operative word is tag team. We aren't exactly a faction anymore. If we won them together, it would feel like an awkward and clumsy win."

"Well, do you have any better ideas? I mean, it's only the two of you, and there's really no one else to pair either of you with that would feel believable. Not to mention, no one who's in on this whole thing."

Dean has had this thoughtful look on his face for a little while now, while Seth and Roman have been going back and forth.

"Why not super Cena?" he pipes up suddenly from the floor. When Seth gives him an odd look, he points at his open mouth and adds, "one fry, one answer."

Once Seth throws a fry in his direction –"you know, you can just get up and come get some fries if you want to"- he elaborates. "Why not stick him with one of us and say the reasoning behind it was because he just wanted to rub it in your face that he has some semblance of what you left behind."

Seth seems to weigh it out in his mind. "I mean, we could, but none of you have really seen eye-to-eye before; it would be even more awkward to put you together when he doesn't really have much business in the feud in the first place. And anyway, he doesn't know what we're doing. You guys on the other hand, while you don't really seem the types to team up for the tag titles, you can just play it off like you just want them because you're bored. Y'know, for shits and giggles. You're not actually trying very hard to get them, you just want to wreck some people's stuff like you used to, since those are the only two titles left open at this point."

He leans back and sighs, thinking hard. "I guess that's all we can hope for."

"What's next after that?"

If Roman knows one thing for fucking certain, it's the way Seth's mind works. He might not say it, but he's already got the next three steps planned out; he just didn't want to overwhelm everyone else with the influx of information. The kid was smart, he'd give him that. But where he was smart, Stephanie was cunning.

"You know," he continues out loud, "that once we do this, Stephanie's going to catch on eventually. All three former Shield members holding belts? She'll think something's up. Got a plan for that?"

Seth doesn't even look bothered. In fact, his eyes are sharp and give off a shine like the cold glimmer of a steel knife blade.

"Please," he says, looking at Roman with those impish eyes, "she may have been the mastermind behind the biggest schemes in this company, but I've outsmarted bigger liars and thieves. She likes to work in the shadows and prey on people's most precious things. I can work within her shadows and then some. By the time she realizes what's happening, we'll have already broken her hold on the company."

Stephanie didn't operate under the saying 'one man's trash is another man's treasure.' She saw her employees as expendable things, a means to an end. Once she'd wheedled away at them all she could, she would dispose of them. She was good at breaking people; just look at the Big Show, once a giant powerhouse, now reduced to being nothing more than the world's largest bitch under the Authority's reign.

But Seth was good at breaking people too; examples A and B were currently sitting on his floor and bed at the moment. He knew how to prey on people's greatest insecurities and the things they loved most too. He knew how to stay two steps ahead and have a contingency plan on the side for every outcome; even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

"After the three of us have the belts, then we have to play our cards right and take the Authority apart little bit by little bit. For me, that means sticking as many wrenches in Stephanie's plans as I can behind the scenes; I have to take out her attack dogs first," Seth says, nibbling on the pad of his thumb. "You two will play the good guys and try to get some momentum from the locker room; if you've got wind in your sails, then you can go anywhere. They back you up, we've got ourselves extra firepower."

"Why can't we just kill 'em all on the spot?" asks Dean, lazily gesturing to Roman to throw him another French fry. "It would be easier than sneaking around with all this cloak and dagger shit, right?"

"It would, but that's a short term plan, and that's dangerous in itself," says Seth. "If we get enough guys willing to back us, god forbid if something goes wrong, then we won't fall back a step if, say, something happens to one of us. We all know Hunter fights like a starved dog when he's cornered. If we let on that he's losing ground, he'll just come at us all at once and take us out at the same time. If that happens, we're fucked. Someone's got to be in the lead at all times." He looks at Roman.

"If it's not me, it's you. If it's not you, it's Dean. There always has to be one of us playing the gamble. If we avoid freaking Hunter out, we can get through this smoothly, without any of us losing an eye or something. If Stephanie smells blood in the water, it's over. She'll give us everything she's got if she thinks we're trying to mess with her."

Dean nods, but Roman has to ask, "You're taking out the attack dogs, you said. Gimme an idea on who they're supposed to be."

"Obviously, it's going to be the big guys. Big Show, most likely, since Kane has already been put out of commission," Seth explains, counting them off on his fingers, "they've barely got a leash on him, but Brock Lesnar is second guess. Undertaker's got dibs on him, so we'll let him deal with that.

"That leaves Kevin Owens, Bray Wyatt, and fucking Sheamus especially with that Money in the Bank contract on the obvious offensive. And," Seth sighs and rubs his forehead, "if I even try to handle Sheamus, I'm gonna have to deal with Randy Orton by extension. He's been gunning for that redhead's contract for weeks now, and he isn't really my biggest fan either. Far as he's concerned, I'm a consolation prize."

"You're gonna try and take 'em on alone?" asks Dean. There's something in the cadence of his voice that sounds off. Worry? Disbelief? Awe?

Seth shrugs. "I mean, may as well. I'm the only one who can get close enough to them to take them out without Stephanie and Hunter focusing all their attention on you two. You've got enough work cut out for you as it is."

Roman raises and eyebrow. "The tag titles? Please, that's hardly work."

"Maybe not," says Seth, "but you've got Wyatt on your tail too. You guys have history; Stephanie's for damn sure gonna capitalize on that. Especially now that you've got a title. He's work enough."

The silence that settles over the trio voices truth enough.

"It'll be a while before you can challenge for the tag titles," Seth eventually says. "When it's time, you've got to be quick. Don't give Stephanie any breathing room; if she catches on, she'll probably invent some stupid stipulation match to keep you guys from winning. Don't mess it up. I'll do my best to make it as stressless as possible, but no promises. You two aren't the only ones keeping a close eye on me."

Roman nods, slow and solemn. "But," he says sharply, low and cold in his baritone, "if they catch you, I'm not so sure you wouldn't sell us out to save your own skin."

Seth shakes his head, pushes the salad away. He's not very hungry anymore.

"I already told you. There's no reason to save my own skin."

Thankfully, Dean and Roman write that off as Seth's confidence in his own plan.

* * *

Dean wakes up on the floor.

The lamplight is still on, filling the room with a yellow glow from the bedside table. Roman is sprawled on the left bed, long legs hanging over the edge, arms folded under his head.

Seth is turned away from the world, one hand curling and uncurling in tiny spasms in his sleep. It reminds Dean of babies. How he knows baby mannerisms is weird in itself, but no one ever asked him why he knows that, so he doesn't talk about it.

He doesn't turn the light off.

The mattress gives way as he shifts his weight into it, but Seth hardly even stirs. He flinches, makes a fist, then relaxes again into whatever sleep he's having. Dean wonders if he's dreaming. Then he wonders what he's dreaming of.

Maybe Crossfit. Maybe he's coming up with more plans in his sleep.

Whatever it is, Dean is happy it's there in Seth's head, because it means he can watch Seth without him waking up and being weirded out by Dean sitting on the edge of his bed, having the time of his life just looking at him while he sleeps.

Dean wonders, as he relaxes into the pattern of Seth's shallow breathing, if he's the epitome of head over heels for someone. Like, he's just tickled pink to be here, watching Seth breathe of all things. Doesn't that show just how fucked up he is for him?

Dean's never been in love before. Sure, he's loved people, like the people who were there through his life who actually cared about him. Like his niece. Like Sammi. Like Seth. Like Roman.

But this is a different kind of love – _like_ \- isn't it?

Like, let's tell terrible jokes to each other because you actually really like their smile. Like, every time they start talking, you just get hopelessly dizzy. Like, sometimes you forget to finish sentences because they suddenly looked at you.

Like, you just like being around them so much that you stand over them at night and watch them sleep.

Okay, that one could teeter over the line of insanity, but this kind of love made you ask yourself if this was what you thought it was, and you answered yourself, _'probably'_.

Dean was in –like? Maybe? _Possibly_?- with a complete nerd, and it made him so topsy-turvy to even begin to think about it.

So many 'L' words. 

* * *

Full speed.

That's how Seth is moving this week. Summerslam is lurking around the corner like an alleyway monster, the Authority is desperately trying to keep it fed so that it doesn't attack the audience come Sunday and horribly cripple someone, and Seth has learned that there are over five thousand nerves in the human body and Kevin fucking Owens has managed to get on every last one of them.

Seth had known that Owens would be the hardest to crack. While you could beat Bray Wyatt well enough by outsmarting his contest of wits, and Sheamus was easier to windup than a windup toy, Owens was the epitome of a cool cucumber. Nothing got to him. He didn't deal in smarts or insults, one-upmanship or any petty garbage like that.

He knew he was good, and he was just here to have a good time. Everyone knew he was good. He was really being paid to come to work and be good.

In a lot of ways, Owens was kind of like Dean. They were both top-notch fighters, they both knew it, they both kind of punched people in the face with how not-bothered they were.

But the similarities ended there, because of one thing in particular. Where Owens lacked empathy, Dean had an insecurity for almost every letter of the alphabet. Granted, he did a fair job of keeping most of them hidden and under wraps, his Achilles' heel stood out like a sore thumb.

" _Trust me_ ," was not a saying Dean took lightly. You could make or break Dean Ambrose with that word. He probably held trust in a higher value than he did money or romance or really anything. It was the one thing he lacked, one thing he craved.

Kevin Owens gave no fucks. Period. And that made him attack dog A.

"He's my first priority. Physically, he isn't even remotely the strongest guy on the Authority's side, but the guy's like a steel vault. You can't get to him. Jokes about his weight, doubting his strength –none of that works. You have to take him out physically," says Seth.

"Why shouldn't it be Rome then?" Dean asks. He's taping his wrists, not looking at the job he's doing or even Seth as he talks to him. "He's got a few pounds on me. Couple dozen on you, especially since you decided to stop eating for all those weeks. He can take out that giant fucker Owens no problem."

"Because Wyatt," Seth replies simply. "I can't ask him to take Owens and the Family on at the same time. Four against one? No way."

"I'm with him," Dean retorts, now looking at Seth with faux annoyance, which turns real when Seth snorts.

"Yeah, two against four powerhouses? Not a chance in hell. And don't forget, just because we aren't strangling each other behind closed doors, it doesn't mean that I'll go easy on you in the ring," Dean makes a curious noise, makes some filthy comment about strangling kinks that Seth immediately talks straight over, "I still have to keep appearances up. And I know you won't, but don't even think of pulling your punches. Hit me like you hit me before."

And maybe it isn't Dean who's doing the hitting, but the pain, when it comes, is worth it.

John comes by later, after Summerslam has come and gone for the year, pokes his head into the locker room.

"Jesus, you're just like Roman," Seth says. He's grinning when he laces up his sneakers though. "Really, I'm okay. He used to mother hen over me and Dean all the time too."

John shrugs sheepishly, raises his hands in placation. "Just wanted to be sure. And congrats. Hope that," he gestures to the United States belt lying on the bench next to Seth, "helps you towards…whatever it is the three of you are working on."

Seth hesitates momentarily, and corrects himself before he thinks it's noticeable.

"What? Who three? Trips and Steph?"

John shakes his head, and in that instance, Seth knows that he hasn't been fooled. "Roman and Dean."

"What are you talking about? I'm not working with those two losers."

John smiles. "You can drop the act, you know. I already know you kids are playing nice again. Towards what, I don't know, but I'm sure it'll be a hell of a ride. You three were always the best at that."

He claps Seth on the shoulder and then turns for the door. "Take care, Seth. Hope whatever it is works out between the three of you." 

* * *

"What's next on the agenda, cap'n?"

"Night of Champions. Be careful."

"You too."

* * *

 **if you get bored, we can stop.**

 **and ksv12, or Kelly, i just want you to know that you nearly made me late to class the morning I got your comment; i just kind of curled up under the covers and whimpered in gratitude. so thanks for that.**

 **-A** C


	5. Chapter 5

They've got to be onto you now, man."

Dean is pacing back and forth, shoulders tight and drawn up pensively. "Otherwise they wouldn't make you do this. They've got it out for you."

"Honestly, don't you think I know that? And keep it down; you aren't even supposed to be in my locker room." Seth leans back against the wall. "I've known that since Battleground. I'm just surprised they didn't spring this on me sooner."

Roman looks up from his spot on the steel chair. "You're in good with John, right? He knows what's going on. He won't run you into the ground, right?"

Seth shakes his head. It had been two weeks since John had let on that he knew that Seth was trying to abandon the Authority. When he told Dean and Roman, they'd responded with much less surprise than he'd first assumed they would. Which was okay.

Not too long after, Trips and Steph told Seth that he would be working two matches back-to-back. Both for the titles.

"You still aren't even top shape. I can't believe they're making you fight Cena and Sting in the same night," Dean is still going on.

"Hey, don't worry, all right," Seth snaps, lifting his head from his hand. "I won't lose, okay? I've got this. I can do this. I won't be the reason we get set back, okay?"

Dean whirls around on his heel like a bat out of hell. "That's not even-"

Seth is on his feet and walking away before Dean finishes his sentence, mumbling, "I'm thirsty."

He stumbles out of the locker room down the hall to catering. His stomach is churning too much for him to eat or drink anything without it coming back up, but it's better than being back in his locker room with Dean and Roman. He just needs some air. He just needs some _fucking air_.

He doesn't realize that he's stopped in the middle of the hallway, one hand clawing at his chest, like if he can rip open his chest, that will get the air flowing into his lungs. And, _oh my god what's happening to me, can't breathe, can't breathe, feels like pins and needles all over_

Someone's grabbing his arm before he even really feels their hand wrapped around his upper bicep. Then they're moving, Seth stumbling next to the pair of strong arms and the arms doing most of the work of walking. Whoever they are has a deep voice.

"C'mon, kiddo, breathe," they rumble, leading him down one hallway and then another, the linoleum tiles all blend together in Seth's head until he feels like he might be sick.

"C'mon, nothing's going to change until you start breathing. I need you to follow my lead, okay?" the disembodied voice coaxes. There's a face in front of Seth's, swimming and swirling, but he can see them miming breathing in and out at slow, heavy increments. "Come on," they murmur softly. Seth tries to repeat after him, his breaths coming tight and shaky for a few moments. The hold on his arms last until his breathing evens out, until the colors stop blurring and the needles go away.

And then they're both on the floor, Seth with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest, and John on the other side of him, facing him with the toes of his shoes scuffing the wall. Seth stares at the ceiling for what he thinks are five long minutes. His hands are shaking. He kind of feels like screaming.

"You gonna be okay?"

John is looking at him when Seth finally drops his gaze. He swallows hard.

"I'm…" his voice is hoarse and croaking. "I'm okay. I'm okay."

John nods. "Do you know what just happened?"

Seth swallows again, tries to clear his throat. Despite his efforts, his voice remains scratching and crackling. "I've got an idea."

"Panic attack," John answers for him. He looks at Seth with quiet eyes. Concern.

Like he actually cares about the way Seth has begun crumbling since Battleground.

"I'm guessing it's about Night of Champions?"

Seth nods, unable to say anything else.

"If you don't mind me saying," John says slowly, "I've seen you're matches from the indies. You've been through worse. Why did this one get you so worked up?"

Seth takes a few breaths. "If I lose, we all lose," he pants.

"I thought you were trying to not be conceited."

"No. I…do you remember? You said you knew I was up to something. I can't lose, or I'll fuck everything we've worked for up."

John watches him for a moment. "Alright," he says eventually, nodding slowly. "I'm gonna help you up, okay? Do you think you'll be okay?"

Seth nods, feeling exhausted. "Totally."

John pulls Seth to his feet, catches him when he stumbles. Seth's head spins in tiny circles, though he's pretty sure he's pressed against John's chest at the moment. Oh.

He pushes away and murmurs an apology. John just shakes his head and shrugs it off.

"Hey," the voice at the end of the hall booms, "break it up over there!"

Seth jumps, almost colliding with John again. John laughs, a rumble in his chest.

"Hey. Found your boy," he says. "You might outta take care of him; he's not feeling too hot."

Dean nods, but doesn't look impressed. "Yeah. I've got him."

They trade Seth over, John tipping his cap in Seth's direction, and Dean scowling after him like he might just start hissing at him like a skinned cat.

"It was just a panic attack," Seth says once John is out of earshot. Dean snorts and scowls, which Seth doesn't understand.

"So you went to John Cena of all people?"

"No. He was just there. Honestly, you would think you guys were my parents or something. Or jealous boyfriends."

Seth dismisses the low, guttural noise Dean makes in the back of his throat as annoyance.

* * *

Summerslam rolls around, like a road roller through the arena. Seth has been preparing himself as best he can, some small thanks owed to Dean and Roman. Dean had taken it upon himself to be the one to make sure that Seth ate between his trips to the gym, got some rest, brought him back down to earth when anxiety threatened to send him rocketing.

Roman, of course, kept his distance, but there were little gestures that showed he was aware of how Seth was faring. Sometimes when Seth worked the benchpress, he would finish up to find a bottle of water and a fresh towel folded on the floor next to him. He was always so tired, understandably, what with all the extra shit he was putting himself through to make sure that every piece of the puzzle fit into place. He fell asleep in the media room once, right after he cut a promo in the ring. He'd been sitting upright in a chair, head thrown back, one arm in his lap, the other hanging limp with his phone balanced precariously in his hand.

Roman had come and left his jacket with him, pulled it up over his chest and gone without any note or fanfare. But Seth knew that it was Roman's; it smelled the way he remembered the huge Samoan smelling.

Which was not creepy in the slightest.

Seth still has yet to return it. Maybe he won't. Maybe he wants a little something to hold onto until –he hopes- Roman comes back around. Truth is, he really does miss his big brother. It's killing him that he's continuously pushing Seth away.

He's a little surprised when said brother corners him in the hallway outside of the gorilla position while he laces up his boots. He doesn't make a sound as he walks up to him and stops just a step away from him, leans against the wall, arms crossed. "Hey," he says, low and calm, sharp enough to demand Seth's full attention.

"Uh," Seth straightens up and shuffles to both of his feet, "hi."

Roman nods at him. "You know what they're trying to do, right?"

Seth looks towards the gorilla position, then back at Roman. He nods. "I do. It won't work though. I can do this."

Seth wonders if their entire conversation is going to consist purely of nodding back and forth. "I'm sure you will," says Roman, like winning two back-to-back title matches is a fucking piece of cake. "Just, uh…" he scratches at his chin, and looks away, "be careful."

Maybe if Seth was a girl, this would've been a bona fide moment for him to go, 'aww,' but this isn't a Lifetime movie, and the last thing Seth wants is to annoy Roman or make him feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. Instead he shakes his head softly, staring hard at Roman. He needs to make him understand. It goes without saying that he'll give it his best shot, even if he has to put his body on the line to make it work, he will.

But they both know that.

* * *

"Sorry, kid," John whispers into Seth's ear as he pins him.

It just wasn't enough. Maybe he wasn't ready. And it hurts.

* * *

Seth destroys Sting.

It's all he can do to keep from letting the guilt eat at his insides. He punches and kicks and stomps and claws his way to keep his title, the only one he has left. He doesn't blame John for giving it his all. It's not his fault. He and Seth were running miles in each other's shoes; there was nothing wrong with either of them wanting to tear each other apart like animals for the sake of the title. They knew what they were getting into when they first began.

Still, it doesn't help that Seth had really no excuse for losing his first match of the night. Maybe if he had been exhausted beforehand.

He's pissed off at himself for losing so early on.

So he beats himself up, but everyone watching thinks that he's whaling away on a fifty-six year old man in white face paint instead.

* * *

If Seth is honest, he doesn't actually remember the end of the match. He doesn't remember pinning Sting, doesn't remember hearing the ref call his name. He's clueless as to how he gets backstage and into his locker room. Barely remembers his legs carrying him down the hall.

He's just so tired, so angry, so disappointed.

Seth trudges through a shower, gets himself dressed as quickly as he can. He gets to his car in the parking lot at a fairly reasonable pace, throws his stuff in the back, and gets into the front seat with as much grace as a blind elephant. From there, he finally lets himself breathe.

He counts the number of heartbeats as they drum against his chest. Sixty.

It takes him sixty seconds to fall asleep.

* * *

"Hey," comes a voice breaking through the walls of sleep, "move over."

Seth is pretty sure he never even opens his eyes to dump himself sideways into the passengers' seat, so whoever this is talking to him has probably just had the easiest time stealing his car and kidnapping him. At this point though, Seth is too tired to really care. Plus, the voice sounds kinda familiar, like a warm blanket with fraying, well-loved edges.

He hears the engine start up, rumble to life, all the little beeps and dings of his car waking itself up, and then the gears shift. They're moving. Someone is driving Seth's car.

Oh well.

"Take me home, would ya?" he murmurs, already dozing off again. He doubts they will, but he can dream. And he does.

Seth dreams of guys in white face paint and American flags. He dreams of his dogs, his brothers, and a big green dragon named Stephanie.

And when he wakes up, the stars and the night sky are shining above him, which he doesn't really being there before. It takes him a moment to recognize that the sun roof has been opened and that the sky is pouring in from that, but once he does, he focuses on figuring out where he is and who he's with. Blinking the heavy sleep from his eyelids, he turns his head to the left, towards the driver's seat.

Dean is there in the seat, head back on the headrest, eyes closed. There's no moon out, and as far as Seth can tell, they aren't under any streetlights, but Dean is glowing. Maybe it's just Seth's head playing tricks on him –it does feel like it's stuffed with cotton and heavier than his neck can support on his shoulders- but it looks as though Dean has a pale, ethereal glow around his face, pointing out every detail in the dark.

Seth blinks.

"You awake yet?" asks Dean. His eyes are still closed, and though his sudden speech was surprising, it isn't surprising that he could tell that Seth was awake without even cracking an eye open.

Seth blinks again. His voice is just as worn thin as he is when he asks Dean, "Where are we?"

They obviously aren't still in the parking lot back at the arena. It looks like, from what Seth can see from looking out his window, a vacant lookout. There's the shining lights of the city below them, like lightning bugs or a reflection of the night sky, and it's very quiet, different from the hustle and bustle of the city. The grass in front of their parking spot is tall and waving gently in the breeze; Seth can even hear a few cicadas in the trees outside.

"You left your door unlocked," says Dean, completely ignoring the prior question. "I was walking by and happened to notice you were knocked the fuck out in the driver's seat. Thought I'd take care of it. And where are?" Dean stretches before he answers, "Someplace called Arrow Pointe. It's a lookout, I think," eyes open now and watching the skyline with lazy interest instead of Seth. "Y'know, like in those really old teen romance movies? The make out hotspots."

Seth just stares at him, kind of thrown for a loop at how causally Dean mentions the stigma that lookouts tended to have. "You took me to a make out hotspot?"

Dean shrugs. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"I'm not kissing you."

Dean presses a hand to his chest where his heart would be. "What a shame. I meant, that it was a good idea because it's quiet up here. Relaxing. After the night you had, I would say you needed to get away for a bit. Take a breather."

Seth groans and kneads the heels of his palms into his eyes. He'd forgotten about the pay-per-view. He'd been trying to fall into such a deep sleep that he forgot the entire night; if only for a few hours before he had to wake up, get on the road, and be reminded of the whole thing again.

"I lost," he mutters. It hurts to say it, makes his chest hurt and his head hot and his body tingle with needles. "I fucked up."

That one feels a little better.

"It's cool, man," says Dean, cool as a summer breeze. He reaches up, wraps his fingers around Seth's wrists, brings his hands down from his face. Seth hadn't even realized that he was still grinding his palms into his eye sockets. "Really," says Dean quietly now, "calm the fuck down. You're hurting yourself."

"It's not cool," insists Seth. He hasn't noticed that Dean hasn't let go of him yet, his thumbs pressing into the soft undersides of his wrists. "We were so goddamn close. The only thing we needed was the title belts and we could've been home free!"

He's not mad at anyone. No one but himself, really. He can't really help it; he's just really tired of suffering like this. Ugh, his eyes still sting from pressing his palms into them so hard. He just wants to go back to sleep, sleep for a week and wake up when everything has gone back to normal. Back to the way it was.

"Do you ever want to go back in time?"

Dean raises an eyebrow. "No," he says simply. 'I'd just be reliving the same mistakes I made the first time."

Seth shakes his head, lets his eyes slip shut. He doesn't really want them to be open anymore anyway. "No, I mean, go back in time to change the mistakes you made. I guess I mean the mistakes that _I_ made. Back in June last year."

Dean absently swipes his thumb over the tattoo on Seth's wrist, thinking. "No," he answers. "Because knowing me, I'd just end up fucking something else up. I'm okay to just be here, in the now."

( _With you_ , he wants to say, but he won't)

Seth stays quiet. He tries to think of all the things he's managed to destroy in the past year and reimagine them differently. He thinks of the Shield, still on top and running the yard, belts around each of their waists. It would've happened eventually, Seth is sure of it; it was inevitable with three talented wrestlers in the ring. He thinks of the cinderblock curbstomp that he regrets so deeply no one would ever know.

He thinks of walking out on Roman and Dean months before the Shield even broke up. He thinks that was his first mistake in a long line of them.

"You wouldn't even go back to the day we met?" Seth asks seemingly out of the blue. He can feel Dean's eyes on him, heavy, intent and questioning. "You saying you wouldn't change that at all? Make it so that you never met me?"

It kind of feels like Dean is slapping him across the face with the way he responds. "No."

It's fierce and low and quiet, the no-nonsense warning tone that garnered no room for argument. Dangerous ground Seth was treading. But he goes for it anyway.

"It probably would've made life easier for everyone involved. Then Roman wouldn't have to regret everything having to do with me and you wouldn't have to help me clean up this fucking mess."

A punch in the neck makes Seth open his eyes. When he looks in surprise, Dean is glaring at him, fist still raised.

"Shut the fuck up, how about?" he snarls. "You fucking idiot. Stubborn…I told you that I wouldn't change a thing. If I said I wouldn't change a thing, then I mean that I wouldn't change a goddamn thing. You're my brother. Whether we're in this together or not, that's not going to change. I regret a lot of the shit I've done, I hate a lot of things I've said, and I won't even lie and say that there aren't a few people I'd probably beat to death if I ever saw them again. But I will never take back anything I did with you, do you hear me?"

Seth is actually shocked. He knows that Dean knows, because he can feel it in his face. He's done a lot of terrible things to the man next to him, but he'd never seen him so pissed off at him for unintentionally pushing his buttons. It's kind of intimidating, as it always is being the center point of Dean's intensity.

Dean drags him into an embrace by his shoulders. He's close enough now that Seth notices that he smells a lot like spearmint gum and leather and something vaguely citrusy. He's not quite sure why he noticed.

"I love you, hear me? Don't ever say something stupid like that again, you dumbass," Dean murmurs into Seth's temple. "I might have to punch you really hard in the head if you try that shit again, got it?"

Seth hasn't tried to hug Dean back. He's still kind of in shock. Apparently, Dean was expecting an answer, because he draws back just enough to scrub his hand through Seth's hair and ruffle it into a dark, frizzy nest. "Got it?" he repeats a little louder. He's grinning when he says it, though.

Seth tries pushing away, too tired to deal with that, but his body betrays him and he laughs sharp and soft, "Okay, okay. I get it!"

When Dean lets him go, he pulls back, running a hand over his hair to smooth it down. Dean is still grinning at him, but something seems a little off about it. Like it's not quite genuine. Whatever familiarity and warmth came from that little Hallmark moment is gone now, draining out of the car like the windows were left open in the winter. Seth shivers.

"Can you _please_ take me home now?"

* * *

Dean is grateful for Seth being asleep in the passenger's seat the entire drive back from the lookout to the hotel. He's fidgety and kind of hates himself and is frustrated at both his own stupidity and Seth's penchant for being an oblivious dumbass.

Why had he said that? it had just sorta rocketed out of his mouth without his permission. Usually, that was fine –Dean flew off at the mouth loads of times. That was practically his mode of daily communication, saying just what he thought.

' _I love you_ ,' was definitely _not_ one of those things.

The moment he'd heard it come flying out from his throat, he'd wanted to pull it back in. For almost two years Dean had kept that one little secret safe, buried under a shit ton of others –another story for another time and the like- but it seemed that recently, it had been clawing its way up from under the rubble and had finally made it to the surface.

Damn it.

And as for Seth, he had just sorta….stared. Like he was dazed. Like Dean hadn't just dropped a bomb on him. How was one supposed to react when your best friend told them that they loved them? Dean wasn't expecting just outright blank looks. In a way, it was sort of a relief: he'd finally said it, after all this time after all, that he had a thing for him. At least Seth hadn't laughed or recoiled from him, like ' _oh my god, ew,_ _no_ ,' but it was also kind of bittersweet too, because the silence and blank look just meant that Seth didn't really understand the depth of what Dean had just told him. He probably figured that Dean was saying he loved him like Roman did, or Jimmy Jacobs or something.

He didn't get that Dean was in the kind of lo- the kind of _like_ , that garnered thinking Seth's most menial mannerisms were the rituals of some awe-inspiring god, or that even when he woke up and his hair was tousled and free from the knot tied to the nape of his neck, he was still the best looking thing in the room –like some sleepy Adonis.

Even if Seth thought he was just being doted on with brotherly, friendship-type love, it was still better than just sitting around waiting for someone else to snatch him up. At least he knew the partial truth.

That was better than nothing.

* * *

Seth is almost dead when he finishes Raw the next day. He drags himself to the back and showers, grabs something edible from catering, and is literally seconds away from taking a nap atop one of the equipment boxes when someone very close and very deep calls his name.

Seth jerks out of his almost-doze with wide eyes, finding himself staring almost eye-to-blue eye with John Cena.

"Hey," he grins. "Comfy?"

Seth grunts and looks skeptical. "What was your first clue?"

John shrugs, ignores the sarcasm. Seth bends one knee and props an arm on his kneecap. "We're cool, right? No one else knows that. It's not really good for either of our images if people see us just talking out in the open."

John agrees. "You're right. Want me to punch you in the jaw to make it look like we hate each other?"

Seth glares halfheartedly at the big man. John brushes it off with an unashamed grin.

"Alright," he relents, raising his hands in placation, "alright. I'm off. I just wanted to say that I hope I didn't mess up you guys' plans too much from Sunday. That's all."

Seth makes a soft sound, between a wince and an annoyed grunt. Sunday was not a topic he was very fond of. "We'll…manage."

On the other hand, it was still weird that even after at least a month of being in on Seth's triple-cross, John still had no real idea of what the hell was even going on. He wasn't blood, and he didn't know him that well, but as far as Seth was concerned, to Dean and Roman, neither was he. Seth had stuck up for the man before; he was a big goofy guy with a heart of gold and was as loyal as a stack of bibles in a courtroom. He didn't like hurting others and did like others hurting each other. He would fit right in…to some degree.

"Actually," Seth starts slowly, "you got a minute? I gotta tell you something."

* * *

Seth has never played chess before, but as far as he's concerned, Stephanie has succeeded in managing to plan two steps ahead of him. Two steps that haven't been dusted off in some few years.

"Wow, haven't seen them in a long time," says Dean of the Dudley Boys who walk down the ramp like they own the fucking place. "Not since the Attitude era."

"It's been a long minute," Seth mutters. He rakes his hands over his hair and sighs hard and heavy. Stephanie was clever, he'd give her that. There's not been a doubt in his mind that she wouldn't be able to catch up to him –they're cut from the same cloth, two cunning masterminds with a penchant for ruthless behavior. He was just hoping that by the time she'd caught up with him, the Authority would already be two feet in the grave and a breath away from eight feet under.

"Why'd they bring back those two old has-beens?" comes Dean's voice, incredulous and disbelieving. He doesn't understand the way Stephanie's head works. Seth begrudgingly explains why they've been set back a good ways behind.

"You and Roman are going after the tag team titles," he says, folding his arms over his chest. He isn't dressed for a fight tonight, without his ring gear on, he looks like a much less menacing figure wandering around the backstage area. "The Dudley Boys are arguably one of the greatest tag team duos to ever grace this company…well," Seth shrugs, "the only duo left that isn't retired for injury or dead. Or old. I mean, let's face it, you and Rome could decimate the New Day in your sleep if you wanted to. Stephanie knows that. She's trying to match you with the most extreme guys this company has ever seen to make sure you don't win."

Dean frowns at the monitor, eyes hard and thoughtful. "Wait," he mutters, narrowing his eyes at the screen, "doesn't that mean she's onto us?"

Seth immediately begins constructing a new plan in his head, but rubs at his temple to stave off the oncoming headache that comes with it. "Yeah. Yeah, I think it does."

Dean grunts and nods, still staring intently at the screen. He nods again, slower this time. "Then we'll just have to beat them at their own game."

Seth looks at him like he's just admitted to killing a man. Dean continues on before he can say anything in protest. "Don't sweat it, man. This is nothing. In case you haven't noticed, we're both tough as nails; I've got more scars than a knife throwers assistant and Rome used to be a football player, didn't he? We'll be okay against these two nursing home escapees."

Seth lets him reach out and hold him by the back of his head, bringing their foreheads to press against each other. "Don't sweat it," Dean says again, lower this time. "Don't want you throwing up or some shit. They wanna throw us through some tables? We'll throw 'em from the rafters." Dean grins deviously, and somehow it's equal parts malice and boyish mischief. Seth can't help but smile at that.

"So," Dean says. He draws out the 'o', and when he talks, Seth can feel his breath ghosting across his lips he's so close, "what do we do now, fearless leader?"

* * *

"We have to stop meeting like this, you know."

Roman grunts noncommittedly and hip checks Seth out of the way of the vending machine. They've both surfaced at two in the morning for snacks and sodas, which seems to be the only time that they ever socialize with each other.

Well…socialize is a strong word.

"You…you, um…" Roman begins, poking at the buttons on the machine. He looks like he's on autopilot, eyes half-drooping from sleep. He sighs and shakes his head, reaching down to grab the bag of M&Ms the machine dispenses. "You okay?"

It takes Seth a moment to realize that he's talking about him. He nods, switching his bag of chips from one hand to the other. "Yeah. I'm fine. You?"

Roman shrugs. "A few things could be different, but, y'know."

Seth hums. "Like what?"

Roman switches to the drink machine. "That's not a jab at you or anything. I know by now you've seen the new competition. Just two more warm bodies, is all. Doesn't mean I would've preferred the easy route."

"I'm working on that," Seth sighs, running his hand over his hair. "Stephanie's probably catching on; she works faster than I give her credit for, I'll give her that much."

"How are things going with her lackeys?"

Stephanie isn't the only one who's good at getting others to do her dirty work. Most of the time, the poor sucker doesn't even know that he's fallen into her trap until it's too late. "Big Show is being taken care of as we speak," says Seth. Roman gives him a look that makes Seth explain instantly with a small grin. "I may or may not have started pressing people's buttons without them knowing it was me. It took some effort on Owens –that guy won't do anything unless he damn well wants to. So I had to use Ryback. I kinda…tipped him off that Kevin Owens would be going after another shot at the Intercontinental title and that maybe Owens would try to ambush him in the hallway. No questions asked –the fight they started in the hallway in catering was amazing."

Roman nods, eyeing Seth with something like terrified awe. Even though he had a few inches and more than enough pounds on him, he couldn't deny that sometimes his little brother made him worry; he was almost as psychotic as Dean, but in his own way. Roman wonders if Seth has noticed.

"So that's Owens out of the way," he says. "But what about Show?"

"Show doesn't like either one of those guys." Seth shrugs. "It was only a matter of time before he started whaling on 'em. Now that Owens has a goal in mind, Show's gonna do everything he can to fuck that up. And you and I both know that if you try to mess with Owens, he'll bring hell to your doorstep. We'll let them run around and tire each other out, neither one of us has to get our hands dirty."

For all his straightforwardness, Kevin Owens really did have a one-track mind, driven only by his own desires. If he wanted to make someone pay, then, damn it, they would. He might try to sneak around and bite Roman's heels, but first and foremost, his attention would be focused on Ryback and Big Show, who he probably hated more than he disliked Roman. And besides, Roman could take care of himself if Owens did try to come sniffing around.

Seth mentally crosses out names on his list:

 _Kevin Owens_

 _Big Show_

 _Kane_

 _Brock Lesnar_

Sheamus (and Randy Orton)

Bray Wyatt

"As far as Bray Wyatt and Sheamus," he mutters around his thumbnail thoughtfully, "I figure why push against Randy's shove? If he wants to take Sheamus out, then by all means. Less effort on us. As for Bray Wyatt, I'm not quite sure. He's tougher to crack; mind-fuckery and existential shenanigans are his forte."

Seth isn't even sure that he could outsmart the man, let alone begin to weave a plan elaborate enough to even match his labyrinthian methods. But he doesn't tell Roman that.

Roman shrugs his massive shoulders and cracks his knuckles, like the man in question would come out of the woodwork at the very mention of his name, which, all creepy things considered, would not be unlike him. "That's fine," growls the Samoan, cool as anything. "If you can't beat 'em with brains, you gotta beat 'em with brawn."

He grins suddenly and reaches out to ruffle Seth's hair. Seth flinches hard at the contact, still half expecting Roman to take a swipe at him.

"I got this," says Roman, retreating back down the hall. He turns halfway and adds, "don't worry about a thing, egghead."

Seth scowls at the nickname, kind of resenting the fact that Roman technically just referred to him as nothing more than the nerd of the group and not one of the heavy hitters like him or Dean, but also kind of ecstatic because Roman just ruffled his hair and called him a name that didn't involve 'motherfucker' or 'son of a bitch'.

In the end, he decides that the small affection powers through being designated as the Donatello of their Ninja Turtle group, and heads back to his room with a grin on his face and a buzz in his stomach.

He doesn't get much sleep, but it's not because he's stressed. He's just too excited.

* * *

"Oh my god."

Seth rakes his hand over his face and sighs. So, tonight, Roman and Dean crash the New Day and the Dudley Boys match, and Dean, the crazy bastard, decides to take the 'crashing' part of the plan literally.

Tables were brought out earlier before and left sitting out like the fire hazards they were, and while Roman pretty much uses the New Day as yard mats to wipe his boots on, Dean decides that he wants to give the Boys a taste of their own medicine and goes flying into the ring, launching both himself and Bubba Ray Dudley into the table minding its own business in front of the announcer's desk.

Seth grimaces once they hit the table and snap it in half, because Dean's head lands weird against the floor, and for a moment, he's scared that he's knocked himself out. Dean doesn't move for a few long moments, not until Roman finally comes around to see what all the commotion is. He picks through the debris and the only other human body still stuck within it to find Dean, grab his arm and help him to his feet. Dean is standing on wobbly feet and he looks like he's sees something in the air around him that no one else can see, but he's grinning in between bouts of confused frowns and smacking his palm hard against the side of his own head like he's trying to knock the cobwebs out, so he must be okay.

Roman still has to help him back to the locker room, and when they get there, they find a very exasperated Seth Rollins.

"Whoa, hey there, kid," Dean slurs happily. He's leaning heavily on Roman's shoulder, and raises one arm to give Seth a very poor two fingered salute. "Y'scared me for a minute there…wasn't 'spectin' you."

Seth pinches the bridge of his nose. "Dean," he sighs, so fed up with Dean's careless bullshit that he doesn't even really know where to begin. Roman does, apparently.

"Save it," he says, monotone and all-business. "Get back to the hotel, we'll talk then."

Seth thumps his head against the lockers, sighing loudly. He swears, if they fuck this up…

"Okay." He looks up and gestures towards Dean who is currently doing a shit job of beatboxing and absentmindedly dancing in one place. "Did you let the trainers look at him? Concussions an' all that jazz?"

Roman gives a slight eye roll, like _duh, of course he did_. "You know Dean; his head's as hard as a rock. He'll be fine."

So Seth goes.

It takes an hour more for Roman and Dean to get back to the hotel, but Seth doesn't even bring it up. He knows from past experience that Roman probably had to deal with Dean refusing to walk in favor of being distracted by his own beatboxing (read: cacophonic, unintelligible noises) and serenading everything from other guys to lampposts.

Punch drunk Dean was at least fun to watch, hell to deal with.

When they finally meet up in Roman and Dean's shared room, Dean is alternating between singing the wrong lyrics to 'Sweet Caroline' and squinting up at the ceiling like there's something amiss with the popcorn plastering and he can't quite figure it out.

Roman and Seth opt to just talk between the two of them, since Dean is currently as useless as a plastic bag in the breeze.

"That was really fucking reckless," says Seth. His tone is even, like he's passive aggressively scolding a child. He's sitting cross-legged on Roman's bed, facing the guy in question, balancing his chin in one hand. Roman is laid back against the headboard, one long leg hanging over the edge of the bed. He shrugs, probably couldn't care less.

"I'm not the one who went through a table."

That is true, but damn it, Roman was supposed to be the one to keep Dean on a leash these days. Seth shakes his head, rubs his forehead. "I know. But do you think you guys could refrain from killing yourselves for a little while longer? Breaking tables with your fucking face isn't going to fix things with the Authority."

"Why does it feel like we're just being suckered into doing your dirty work?"

Seth blinks. "What?"

Roman repeats himself, easy and effortless. "Why does it feel like you're just using me and Dean over there to clean up your mess?" If he's angry, he sure is doing a bang-up job of not showing it. And fuck, Seth sits there in stunned silence for long enough that he realizes, hey, maybe Roman's fucking right.

He'd always thought of it as trying to destroy what he created; the Authority finally being broken up would've benefited everyone, right? But then again, that's exactly what he said about the Shield. He'd destroyed what he'd created once before, and it's only now that he realizes how fucked up this entire plan has been.

Roman looks like he's still waiting on an answer. Seth says, "I think…I think you might be right."

And wouldn't you know it, Roman looks surprised.

"No matter what, I've always been selfish," he murmurs, blinking like he's just seen the literal and metaphorical light. "At the root of everything I've done, it's always been some plan to get what I want, even if it didn't seem like it at the time. I can paint it up gold and say it's for the good of someone else, or justice or some heroic shit like that, or I can tear it all down and say that it's," he makes air-quotations with his fingers, " _'best for business_.' Doesn't matter. It was never about anyone but me."

In the very back of his head, he hears a little voice asking, ' _wow, don't you realize what an asshole you are?'_

Damn. He thought he'd been doing good.

When he looks back up at Roman, it looks like he might say something -he's watching Seth with strange eyes- but Dean cuts in suddenly.

"Anyone else want a soda?" he asks. He sounds a lot more sure and stable now. "I'm gonna get one." Seth shakes his head. "Uh, no. Give me the money; I don't trust you to go to the machine and not fall out in the hallway. You still sway when you walk."

Dean throws something that pops against Seth's forehead and falls into his lap. A quarter.

The other two have landed on the carpeted floor below. "There you go," Dean says, lying back on the bed. He probably had no intention of getting up at all, only fooling someone into getting up for him. Seth rolls his eyes and gets up to leave. He had been fishing for an excuse to disappear anyway.

Seth wanders the halls instead of going to the vending machines around the corner. He goes up four floors, comes down three, just walks and walks while he tries to figure things out.

He'd colossally fucked up. Why was he always the bad guy? Roman made sense; even if they were teaming up together to take down a force that literally no one liked, Seth had still kind of gone into it just wanting to be able to have stable ground to stand on once the Authority was gone. He'd thought it was a win-win situation for everyone, but it wasn't. Not really.

In the end, he was still using people, manipulating them and twisting them up to fix the problems he himself had made. It wasn't fair to them, not to Roman and Dean, his former friends, especially. It was cruel really, and definitely not the way to go about earning their trust back. God, he sounds just like Stephanie.

And the drink gets stuck in the machine when Seth finally goes to get it.

Seth breaks.

He punches the machine over and over, pounding out a mad rhythm on the hard plastic face, until his hands hurt and his bones vibrate. He can't focus on anything except the disgust he sees in himself. He can't hear or see or say anything, and he doesn't care if he wakes up the other guests. He doesn't care if he gets kicked out. He doesn't care if he breaks the machine. He doesn't care.

He does however find himself being jerked away from the machine so quickly that he nearly loses his balance and falls flat on his ass. Someone with strong arms catches him, though. They catch him and keep pulling him back, away from the machine, away down the hall.

"Hey," says the voice, "calm down. Calm down."

Seth thinks he nods, but he can't be sure. He's pretty certain he's hyperventilating.

Eventually, he just drops his weight and crumples to the ground with his back against the wall. He needs to get it together. He needs to breathe.

Seth breathes in and out as evenly as he can. It comes shaky at first, but after numerous attempts and the low voice in his ear, he gets it back to normal. Then he notices Roman.

Seth slowly brushes the hair out of his eyes and stares hard at the floor. "Hi," he musters.

Roman doesn't return the greeting. "What the hell happened?" he asks, but there's no malice in it. It's neutral sort of. It kind of makes Seth hurt. "You were gone for twenty minutes and then when you finally do turn up, your beating the hell out of the vending machine."

Seth doesn't have an answer really. Well, he does, but there ae so many words ricocheting around in his brain that his mouth can't quite keep up and so they don't come out. What happened, Roman wants to know.

 _I'm a consummate fuck-up. I'm a selfish bastard. I'm literally the spitting image of the person I hate most. I can't change it. I can't stop it. I just want it to stop. I wanted to make it right. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm tired. I'm angry. I'm hurt. I'm scared_ -

In the end, he settles for two words, the thousand-pound phrase.

"I'm sorry."

* * *

When Seth looks up, Dean is watching him carefully.

"What?"

Dean stares hard, but repeats the question. "You weren't doing all of that because you thought you deserved it, were you?"

Seth blinks lamely. "Doing all of what?"

Dean shrugs. "Y'know," he gesticulates languidly with the tv remote in his hands, "not eating. Not sleeping."

Seth shakes his head slowly, an eyebrow quirked. "No?"

Why would he purposefully starve himself like that-

Oh.

Oh, _no_.

Seth narrows his eyes. His blood feels icy cold and bubbling hot at the same time and he can feel the pins and needles sensation up and down his arms now. "You thought I was self-harming?"

Dean doesn't nod his head yes, but he doesn't shake it in denial either. He just stares.

Well, to be fair, it wasn't a definite answer; Seth had taken everything Roman and Dean and everyone else had thrown at him in the beginning because he felt like he had at least owed them that –a right to get one free kick while Seth was lying down.

But no, he hadn't starved himself or forced himself to go without a proper night's sleep for almost a month because he thought that it was fair.

"I was _depressed_ , Dean," Seth adds, rolling his eyes. "Jesus Christ…when it feels like everyone's trying to tear you limb from fucking limb, I think it's normal behavior to lose your appetite."

Dean simply nods, probably to appease Seth and keep him from freaking out on him like Seth knows he's about to. "Okay," he says easily. "Okay."

They both settle into silence, Dean staring at the television screen but probably not actually seeing it, and Seth sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest on the other bed. They've maybe got an hour before Roman gets back. That's why Dean decides to spring.

"You asked me if I could go back in time," he says, catching Seth's attention, "would I change anything? I've been thinking." He lets that hang in the air for a moment.

"Yeah," says Seth slowly. "Yeah, I did."

"If I regretted anything. I would go back to when you first hit me with that chair," says Dean, almost wistfully. He sees Seth cringe out of the corner of his eye. "I would make myself fight harder for you. I wanted to bring you back, to put everything back together again, but I guess that's why they call you the glue and not me."

Seth stares at him. "You…"

 _You wouldn't have been able to reach me_.

But the words don't come, so the silence will have to do.

Roman comes back forty minutes later, and by then, Seth is gone and Dean is staring at the ceiling like it might start talking to him, telling him what he did wrong.

It doesn't help that Seth's room is right above theirs.

* * *

hi everyone. college is kicking me in the throat, but here i am. as always, you know my tumblr is

come talk to me there, or send me prompts.

-AC


	6. Chapter 6

Damn, Stephanie was smart.

* * *

Seth rolls his shoulders, bounces on the balls of his feet, tries to stay warm for his next match. He catches sight of himself in the mirror and lets his gaze linger on his reflection for a moment. His hair is as dark as his eyes, the blonde completely disappeared on the one side of his head, and even though he's been doing a better job of remembering to eat and going to the gym, he's still not as bulky as he used to be. He looks leaner, still got an impressive build, nonetheless. He looks like a blast from the past; like, circa 2008.

If he was wearing trunks instead of these latex pants, he wouldn't be able to tell the difference really. For now, the Authority has backed off of Seth, giving him some space. They haven't tried to pit him against any murder machines lately, and currently, Brock Lesnar has begun some world tour of some kind –fucking farewell, he won't be missed, certainly not by Seth. It was almost too good to be true, which was why Seth hadn't yet let his guard down. That was how they got you; they lured you in thinking they'd forgotten about you, then once you started relaxing, they'd string you up by your throat.

Never underestimate a McMahon.

Seth's got a match with Cena tonight. He was wondering when it was going to happen again; they hadn't locked up in a while. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't at least a little relieved to be going against the former champion once more.

He's halfway to gorilla position when he hears his name being called, and he freezes.

Shit.

"You're all ready for your match tonight?"

Seth turns, finds himself face to face with Triple H, who doesn't look quite as convincing as he should be, only a few steps away from him. It's a real thrill killer to see Hunter looking at him like he's just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. Seth does his best to keep up appearance though; don't slip up and they can't take you out with clean conscience.

"Yeah," Seth replies without missing a beat. "It's been awhile. It'll be nice to fight someone who isn't a dusty has-been."

Hunter nods, still unnervingly unconvinced. "Well, I don't need to wish you luck then. But Seth," he immediately closes the space between them, almost stepping all over Seth's toes, "watch your back; you've been playing a dangerous game these past few months. Hate for you to find yourself blindsided and dead in the water."

Oddly cryptic. Seth doesn't get a chance to inquire the details; Hunter is already stalking off down the hall. It doesn't really matter though. It already sounds like he's out of time.

Seth hardly recognizes the music when it hits. One quick glance at John's face says that neither does he. At least, not right away. It's still confusion that colors his face, but it's more ' _dear god, why?_ ' kind of confusion. And then the cackle.

Oh, yes. Seth remembers her.

That's right. _Her_.

A huge behemoth of a woman comes sauntering down the ramp, braids swinging like black swamp vines around her face. She's still a ways away, but Seth can see the recognition in her eyes, wonders if she can spy the dread in his. She remembers him, that's for sure, though she'd gone by a different name when he'd faced her before.

Well, it was good to know that the commentators and ringside officials remembered Kharma. Despite their combined efforts to stop her approach to the ring, it's kind of like throwing paper balls at a hurricane. She barrels right through them, making her way into the ring. Seth is still reeling at the flat-out murder in her eyes, and John is somewhere next to him, standing around not really knowing what to do.

Kharma has a deadly smile carved onto her face, like a cat who's just cornered two mice. Seth knows that look. She's the type to play with her food before she kills them. But what the hell is she doing here? Raw was her old stomping ground for sure, but why now?

Kharma lunges, much quicker than Seth was expecting, and it hits him.

She's the blindside.

He hits the mat, his jaw flaring in hot pain, and barely has enough time to roll out of the way before the toe of Kharma's boot kicks his head off of his shoulders. Once he's out of the way, he rolls into a kneeling position, staring hard at Kharma, who just grins like she's having the time of her life. She probably is.

It figures. Seth should've known better. He had been Triple H's pet project for longer than he'd been in development; even way back in the indies. Of course he'd know that the one person Seth couldn't beat at a flat out mat wrestling match was Kharma. He hadn't been able to beat her because of his own fucking rules: he didn't hit women. By the time he'd figured out that Kharma didn't care, it was too late to make any headway in their match. She'd decimated him.

If there was one thing the Amazonian woman hated, it was being underestimated. Well, Seth wouldn't make that mistake again.

John is still in the ring. Why, Seth doesn't know. Its kind of obvious who Kharma's here for now, so why doesn't he just go?

Kharma pays no attention to him. She makes like a speeding semi for Seth, who, at this point, is ready for her. He ducks out of her reach and comes up behind her, kicking out at the back of her knees, making every blow count. She staggers, but eventually turns with fire blazing in her eyes and rushes at Seth again. For at least five minutes it looks like Seth's just running from her, getting his licks in where he could, but never really landing any major damage. He can't keep hoping this little game of cat and mouse will tire her out forever. And then he remembers.

Seth turns so quickly on his heel that he himself almost falls over and Kharma is so close that he can almost feel the rough, coarse hair of her braids swinging against his arm. He cocks his fist back and tries his best not to hate himself, especially when Kharma hits the mat and the fans give him hell.

He lets Kharma get to her feet, and when she's barely upright, he curbstomps her.

He can't do anything else. He can't look at Kharma sprawled on the mat, trying to use her elbow to prop herself up. He can't face the crowd, who no doubt want to crucify him.

So Seth runs.

Backstage is no better than out there on the mat. There are people asking him what the hell he was doing out there, what gave him the right to beat up on a woman, what the hell was he thinking. Seth tries his best not to crack in front of all these people, finds the nearest, emptiest room and slams the door shut. He slams it harder than necessary, knocking his knuckles against it. The only other things in the room are a folding table and a discarded storage crate. Seth flips the table and shoves the crate, and when that isn't enough to take the sharp age of anxiety off, he beats his knuckles against the wall.

Cena is behind him, grabbing him under his arms and pulling him away from the wall. Seth doesn't fight him, just glares at the floor and trembles with rage, breathing hard and panting. "Hey," says John in his ear, "hey, calm down."

Seth twists in his grip, trying to wrench himself away. Like he didn't already know that he needed to chill the fuck out.

John switches his tactic suddenly, wraps his arms around Seth and pulls him down to the floor with him. "Hey, come on. Breaking your hands isn't going to change anything."

Seth grinds his teeth and takes a deep breath, trying to mimic the way Cena's chest rises and falls against his shoulders. John murmurs to him, probably asking him what the hell happened. Eventually, they fall into silence. John finally lets Seth go, lets him move so that he can face him. Seth curls in on himself, running a hand through his tousled, sweaty hair. "I'm…" he trails off and raises his head. "I'm sorry."

He has no idea what he's apologizing to John for, and thankfully, he doesn't ask. He nods. "It's okay. What happened? What the hell was that all about?"

Seth gives him a flat look. "If I knew, don't you think I would have found a way around that?"

"You're whip-smart, Seth, I'll give you that," John says, shaking his head. "But it's okay if you don't plan one step ahead of everyone. You're only human."

"I'm not that fucking conceited," Seth replies sharply. "And I'm kinda hurt that you think that. It's just…" He rakes his hand over his face, taking another deep breath before he suddenly freaked out again. "I fucked up. Kharma…they brought her back as a failsafe."

Considering she's one of the few female wrestlers that could go toe-to-toe with a man in the ring and quite possibly give them a run for their money, it seems like a pretty well thought out failsafe. Though it's no coincidence that they brought in the one woman Seth had a rough history with.

"I don't hit girls."

John looks mildly surprised, which makes Seth kind of annoyed.

"I don't hit women. I don't fight dirty like that, but that's how Kharma works. Back when I was in the indies, no one would step in the ring with her. I thought I could take her, y'know? I thought it would just be good old-fashioned mat wrestling."

Seth shakes his head. "But she doesn't work like that. She hates when people underestimate her because she's a woman. She fought me like we were just two guys in a bar fight. I hit her once." John, to his credit, doesn't comment on the haunted look in Seth's eyes. That doesn't mean he doesn't ask for clarification, at least with the way his eyes bore into the side of Seth's head.

"That's chivalrous of you," he says. "But I'm guessing that's not the only reason."

Seth shakes his head, sighs inwardly. He can't believe he's about to have a Dr. Phil moment in an empty room with John Cena of all people.

"My parents are divorced. They split up when I was, like, sixteen, so I wasn't too young. They argued from time to time, y'know? Sometimes I would hear them, but it was like I was hearing them every night outside my door," says Seth. He remembers standing on the staircase at night, staring down at his parents arguing in the kitchen, but that had been a one time thing. He was usually out of the house, picking backyard fights with the other kids in the neighborhood and generally being an average teenage boy with what little Buffalo, Iowa had to work with. He never really saw them arguing, to be honest.

"But the one time I saw them fight, I told myself that I would never let myself get so mad that I would hit a woman," Seth continues. "My dad only hit my mom once, hit her in the shoulder and made her fall into the kitchen table. Hurt her back. That was all it took for me to tell myself that I would not make the same mistake my dad made."

"Kharma broke that rule. I hit her, twice now. I curbstomped her. They knew I would," and it sounds like Seth is talking mostly to himself now. "They knew the one person I couldn't beat was a woman. And I let them get to me." Seth slowly uncurls and leans back, his head thumping against the wall. His eyes screw shut tightly and he pulls his hair at the roots. "Damn it," he growls.

John has been mostly silent the entire time. But now he scoots closer to Seth, carefully pulls his hand knotted unforgivingly from his hair. He turns his hand over in his own, exhales deep when he finds the red bruises forming on Seth's knuckles.

"I'm sure your boys've told you to stop doing shit like this to yourself by now, kiddo," he says gently. Seth laughs softly, but there's no humor in it. "You wouldn't have been the first, sorry to disappoint."

John just shakes his head. "I think I see where you're coming from. But that doesn't mean you have to beat yourself up about it. In the long run, I think you know that it will all pay off. If you hadn't faced Kharma in that ring, then Stephanie and Triple H would have just kept sending her after you."

"I didn't have to overkill, though."

"Why did you?"

Seth rolls his eyes, throws his hands into the air. "Hell if I know! I mean…it's like you said, I guess. If I didn't take her out of the equation from the get-go, it would've just been prolonging the inevitable." And he doesn't say it out loud, but he was trying to prove a point as well. He knew the powers that be were watching the whole time; he needed to prove to them how ruthless he was willing to be to take them down bit by bit. They'd driven him to this. He'd let them drive him to this.

Well, he would just have to drive them all over the side of the cliff then. If this was going to end, it was going to end in fire, even if that meant Seth got swallowed up by the flames as well.

* * *

"I'll walk you back."

Seth looks up quizzically at John. The man shrugs, easy-going as usual. "If you want me to. It's just…I'm not really sure letting you walk to your locker room is a good idea, especially considering the looks the guys were giving you before."

Seth shakes his head, relaxing against the wall. "No," he answers. "No, I've got this. I probably deserve everything they throw at me anyway."

It startles him to near death when John grabs his shoulders and warns him in a low, deep voice, "Don't you do that to yourself. Don't do that. It wasn't like you had a choice. Don't do this to yourself, okay?"

Seth lets John lead him out of the room, lets him follow him through the halls towards his locker room amidst all the looks he gets from the rest of the roster, the stage hands, and eventually the man in charge.

When Seth meets the eyes of Triple H standing further down the hall, he charges forward, almost too quick for John to intercept.

"You bastard!"

John grabs his shoulder before he can do something especially stupid to his boss that might get him fired.

"How could you do that to me? After everything that's happened, how can you-"

Hunter, the smug son of a bitch, doesn't even have the decency to keep a grin off of his face. "Strike a nerve, did I?"

Seth yanks against John's grip on his arms. "You knew what that meant to me!"

Hunter knew him better than anyone, second only to Seth's two former brothers. He knew the deepest parts of Seth's mind; after all, he'd been the one to bring the kid into the business. He'd known him almost as long as Dean and Roman had.

Seth realized then, that he'd made yet another mistake. He'd thought that Triple H would have enough honor left in his years of being the top dog of the company to keep what was sacred from ruin. Apparently not.

Hunter's smirk finally dissipates. Small victory.

"Let him go, Cena," he says, flicking his wrist at him like he would a dog. He doesn't wait for him though, rips Seth out of John's grip by his forearm, pulls him close. "Don't think that I don't know what you're doing. You might think you're a cunning little shit, but let me be the first to tell you that you will never outsmart me. I've been in this business for longer than you've been alive, Rollins. I know all the tricks and schemes and rats when I see one, and I've been getting rid of insects like you for years. Don't think I don't know what you're doing. You thought you were the mastermind behind this whole insubordination scheme? You've only fucked things up for yourself with this little battle you've started. I'll bring the war to your doorstep, kid, and I can assure you, you won't make it out alive."

Hunter lets go of Seth and shoves him away. "If you know what's good for you, Cena," he warns, glaring icily at the man from over Seth's shoulder, "you'll stay out of it."

Seth glares at the man's back as he stalks back down the hall. John can see Seth's bare back tensing, reaches out and touches his arm almost in an act of comfort. "Kid…"

Seth squeezes his fists tight, his breaths coming in tight little hisses. He really should try to compose himself; being this angry at the man who might screw up everything they've worked up to till now is not a good idea. Knowing himself, Seth would probably do something really fucking stupid.

"Cena," he growls out, but he can't turn to face him. "You…I think he's right."

Seth's throat burns when he's said it. He cranes his neck to glance at John from over his shoulder.

"I'm not going to let you get caught up in my mess. Don't talk to me anymore."

Seth gets maybe three steps away from John before he feels the man starting behind him. Part of him is a little relieved when John calls, "Seth, wait," because that means he must care about him a little, right? That's someone. The other part of him is kind of annoyed, because wow, he is trying to be the hero here, and save John from a huge mistake that could cost him his job. Didn't he see that?

It takes a hand around Seth's bicep to get him to stop so that John can say, "I'm here to help you, kid. We'll fix this together, okay? You and your boys and me; the more people fighting on your side, the better, right? You don't have to do everything alone."

Alone. Everyone left him, didn't they? Or rather, they moved on and left him. Seth shakes his head. He has to do this alone. He can't let anyone get caught up in his mess. He started it alone, might as well fight it alone. Even if that means cutting Roman and Dean out of the picture. He really couldn't forgive himself if he got them into trouble too. The stakes were higher now, especially now that he'd been found out prematurely. None of them deserved it.

"I'll be damned if I fuck everything up for everyone else," says Seth, twisting away in John's grip. "You're the face of the company. If you go down, it'll throw everything out of order."

"That's how these things work!" John insists tightening his grip. "We move on, we pass the torch. There were faces before mine, there'll be faces when I'm gone."

"But not anytime soon." Seth shakes his head. Not in his prime.

"Please," says John, like he's heard what Seth is thinking, "I'm hardly in my prime. I've got at least a year or two at most before I've gotta give it up."

Seth whirls around, something akin to panic stirring in his chest. John was giving up?

"All the more reason for me to help you. I've gotta leave my mark somehow, right?" John offers Seth one of his huge kilowatt smiles. "I want to leave this company better than I found it. No Authority or tyrannical dictators mucking it up. If I could do anything on my last run, it would be this."

Seth stares at him, wide-eyed. It's a little much to take in. He knew Cena wouldn't stay on the circuit forever, but from the way he was speaking, it sounded like the inevitable wasn't too far on down the road. And the fact that Hunter and Stephanie had caught on so quickly, too quickly, was bad enough. So many things were changing.

Seth snorts, grinning with no humor behind it. "Stupid."

John shrugs. "Maybe. But we all have something that makes us a little stupid right?"

Seth finally tears away from John. "This is your career we're talking about here!"

"I told you," John says just as calm and smooth as always, "I only got a couple hundred miles left, kid. Give me this last run. I want to go out swinging."

He grins while all Seth can do is glare at him. He laughs when he grumbles, "I don't like you," like a kid on the playground.

"Don't wound me, kiddo. After I've given you my varsity jacket all those times, I would've thought you loved having me around," says John. Seth rolls his eyes.

But he's heard that before. _Where_ …?

* * *

Dean Ambrose is not a gentle man.

There is no way he would've been able to pick the splinters out of his shoulders as carefully as Seth is doing right now, and he probably knows it too. So he sits still and lets Seth be all gentle and careful with the pieces of broken table sticking in his shoulder, and is kind of annoyed because he may or may not want to strangle him.

For one, he hasn't spoken about what the hell exactly went on in the ring earlier that night, because seriously: what the hell.

And two, Seth has long fingers that feel more like light feather touches against Dean's shoulder, which is infuriating because shouldn't getting pieces of _fucking_ _trees_ pulled out of your skin hurt a little more than this?

If he's honest, Dean's never been good at that kind of thing; being gentle and careful, and all. It feels as though nothing is there and everything all at once, like waiting for the knife to just puncture the skin and _get it over with_

"What was that all about in the ring tonight?" Dean asks to keep from just throwing Seth to the floor and sinking his nails into his skin just to stop the madness. Seth shrugs behind him, fingers still working deftly, careful, careful.

"Just some old business."

"Bullshit," says Dean, and Seth jumps, startled. "There's no way you're gonna get off that easy. Not with the way you legged it outta there. Forgot your belt and everything. What really happened?"

Finally some feeling comes; a particularly stubborn splinter decides it wants to snag and stay put, so Seth resolves to just yanking it out.

"I messed up."

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Really? Looked to me like you won that fight. Barely."

Seth cringes. "No, not that. It's just…never mind. All you need to know is that we're caught."

Dean freezes, brow furrowed like he didn't understand what Seth just said. He turns to face him, ignoring the annoyed noise Seth makes when he does. "What?"

"Triple H knows. That fight with Kharma was his way of telling me he knew. Everything."

Dean recognizes a haunted cadence in Seth's voice, maybe because he's heard it in his own so many times. Whatever the 'old business' was with Seth and Hunter and Kharma, it must've been something that cut deep.

"So now what do we do? What's the plan?"

Seth shakes his head, nudging Dean's shoulder in a silent gesture meant for him to turn back around so that he could finish. "There is no plan. At least not for you and Roman anyway. As far as you guys are concerned, it's over."

Dean refuses to budge, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "What the hell are you talking about? We're almost there; isn't that what you told us?"

He won't let himself back down when Seth's eyes flash. "Yeah, well, things change, Dean. There's more at stake now. I have to kill this now before it gets out of hand, and will you please turn around so I can finish pulling these fucking splinters out of you?"

Seth probably hasn't realized he's almost shouting now. Dean bats his hands away from his bare skin and doubles his persistence. "So, what, you're saying you're kicking us off the plan? Just because Trips and Steph figured it out? That's bullshit! We're in this together-"

"They've got a target on my back, man. Me and everyone around me. Everyone I care about, everyone who cares about me, even if there's only, like, one or two of those. I've already monumentally fucked up once; I won't do it again. Not to you or Roman or anyone else," says Seth, and he's still prodding at Dean's shoulders, only with more force now. He's trying to shut him up, he realizes. Close himself off. Dean is not having any of that.

"So?" he barks. "I've had a target on my back all my life! I've probably got bullseye stickers overlapping each other by now; you think one more is gonna make a difference?"

Seth rolls his eyes and gives Dean's shoulder a particularly rough shove, muttering something about not wanting to talk about it, can he please just turn around so he can finish his shoulder? He isn't even listening to Dean anymore, and if there's one thing Dean Ambrose hates, it's not being listened to. He springs up from the floor and topples over Seth, who only has a moment to realize what's going on and immediately struggles under Dean's weight.

He shoves the heel of his palm hard against Dean's collarbone, trying to push him off. "What the hell are you-"

Dean wrestles Seth's wrists to the mattress beside his head and shakes him. "Look!" he growls, ignoring the blatant confusion and annoyance-turned-anger in Seth's eyes. "Do you think I give a shit if Triple H and Stephanie have it out for me? You know they don't like me anyway; I'm not fucking afraid of them! Jesus, Seth, I'm –we're trying to help you! You came to us, remember? And now you've got us and you're trying to push us away again? For fuck's sake, make up your goddamn mind!"

Seth spits fire. It's one of the things Dean likes about him; maybe not right now when he's trying to get through to him though.

"I'm trying to protect you guys!" he says. "I messed up, okay? I'm trying to end this before it becomes something I can't stop."

"I don't need you to protect me," Dean hisses. "Rome and I, we don't need you to protect us. We need you to get your head on straight and tell us how to beat this thing! They wanna come after our jobs? Fine; but do I really need to remind you whose callin' the shots at the moment? They've got no room to be makin' threats like that; not when we've got 'em by the balls."

"That's not-"

Dean cuts Seth off. "Don't you trust us enough to let us help you? Do you think we're helpless or something? We can fight for ourselves the same as we can fight for each other. Well, I'm fighting for you, and the Authority can't do shit about it. I'm not going to let you do this-"

"Why won't you just let me do this for you?"

Seth's not a shouter. He can keep his cool even in the heat of battle, which is something Dean's never been able to do. But Seth is shouting now and the anger has drained away from his face, leaving only frustration and a special brand of hatred directed at himself. Dean knows that look well; he's seen it in his own reflection lots of times.

"Why won't you let me fix this? I'm trying not to hurt you," says Seth. He probably knows he sounds desperate, but it's fitting; he's a desperate man. "Let me fix this. Please. I owe you that much."

There's another sound in the room, but neither of them notice. It's probably one of the people in the room over or upstairs anyway. Dean feels like if he stares hard enough through Seth's skull, he might actually see where in the world Seth got the idea that he owed him anything. Seth's eyes flicker back and forth across his face, like he's searching for answers in Dean's brain too. Dean decides to make it easier for him.

"You don't owe me anything. We're brothers. That's what brothers do."

And he can't say anymore because he can feel Roman's eyes against his temple, and figures with a grimace that the noise from earlier must've been him coming through the door. He caught the tail end of the conversation, which is kind of awkward, but he'll get it eventually.

As far as Dean's concerned, this talk is over.

* * *

 _forget about the tag team belts. we gotta move_ _on_.

 **something to do with trips and steph im assuming?**

 _on to us. gotta move fast._

 **right. whens showtime?**

 _monday_.

* * *

hello. this ones kinda of short. thats because i missed you guys and wanted to get this bit out. come chat me up at . its fun.

-AC


	7. Chapter 7

"We never should've trusted you!"

It comes from Dean, standing over Seth while the latter looks on, bruised and battered. Dean looks absolutely livid, blue eyes blazing. Seth can see his fists shaking, muscles tremoring, and all he can think of now is how he hadn't meant for this to happen.

He sees now; they really shouldn't have trusted him.

* * *

Seth has been staring at his phone for almost twenty minutes now. He turns it over and over in his hands like it might change shape and color if he continues to stare at it, only punching the home button every once in a while, glancing at the screen with dull eyes. There's one unanswered message in his inbox now; it's been bothering him all afternoon.

 **tomorrows the day.**

 **whats the plan?**

It's from Roman. Even on the other side of the screen, Seth can feel the reluctance rolling off the man in waves. Seth knows that he would probably rather step on a Lego in the dark for the rest of his life before he wasted anymore of it trusting Seth; the fact that he's even bothering to text _Seth_ first is a feat in its own right.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have the answer to that question. The plan up to this point…is not really a plan at all.

"Going out guns blazing isn't really your style," Roman told him once. "You've always got something; even if it's as simple as changing the way we walk to the ring."

And he's right. Seth is always the one with a plan, which, as its been turning out this week, has failed to stay a constant in the current sea of variables.

Seth is pretty sure he's stuck. He's found a speedbump in his own plan, and its proving to be a bit of a bitch. Eventually, Seth drags his hands over his face and sighs. He lies back and stares at the ceiling, gathering himself, then rolls off his bed and goes to the bathroom. He's really just killing time; trims his beard, stupid stuff like playing with his hair in the mirror, opening his mouth really wide and poking around at his teeth in the very back –that ones actually a health measure, he got decked pretty hard the other day; it still bothers him twenty-four hours later.

He needs to get it together. ' _You've got a plan in motion,_ _whether you're on board or not_ ,' he scolds his reflection in the mirror. ' _Get your shit together_.'

Being the kind of guy he is, Seth decides a trip to the hotel gym is just what he needs. He changes into a t-shirt and another pair of gym shorts and grabs his bag. A good sweat will help him get around these roadblocks, right?

The gym isn't empty when Seth gets down there. Of course, housing a bunch of wrestlers in the same area, it wouldn't have been empty to begin with. But its still a little shocking to see so many of his co-workers down there. It figures the two guys he could probably trust aren't here at the moment. What the hell, Cena wasn't even here? Seth sighs and finds a corner to start his warmups, vaguely wondering where his team is before he shakes the thoughts loose from his head and forces himself to focus on his workout.

* * *

Well, no one said that it would be easy, that's for sure.

There's not really a word for what Dean feels when he looks at Seth. Obviously, 'feelings' would be operative, but if you told him that, you would be a smartass. He could grant himself the ease of calling it love, but then that would snowball into so many other words that made his head hurt when he thought about them. He could say those words, but he would hesitate, and who would believe that then? Dean certainly wouldn't.

It's complicated. And it's not like he would ever tell Seth that; tell him that he _loved him_. Because even though he'd stabbed him in the back, Dean still waited for him to come back around to his old self –he'd never be able to forgive himself or Seth if he told him the truth before he was sure he could trust him completely. Yeah, he might love Seth, but he was still healing from the past.

He kind of hated him for that. Dean might've told him the truth back when they were the Shield, but then Seth had gone and ruined that. He'd set Dean back so much, torn down the courage he'd worked up after all that time. And he hadn't even apologized for it.

Was that why he was so mad? Because Seth had completely disregarded his feelings?

Dean is asking himself rhetorical questions and is getting nowhere. He thinks briefly about going to find Seth and preoccupy himself with listening to him rattle off yet another phase of his plan, but once his stomach starts to turn at the thought of his former teammate, he kills that idea before it can see the light of day.

And that's another thing.

Why are they taking so damn long to act? Didn't Seth say the Authority had caught onto them already? It would've made more sense to attack now that they'd been found out. Seth was smart, Dean would give him that, but he liked to take his time. He liked to wait things out and be slippery, too slippery to be caught. But Stephanie was exactly the same. She was the only one who could beat Seth at his own game, and from the looks of it, she already had.

* * *

 _where are you?_

 _we need to talk_

 **about what?**

 _tomorrow_.

 _downstairs. table by the window. youll see me._

That's what Seth texts Roman. His phone tells him he'd sent that last two messages almost fifteen minutes ago, but there was still no sign of Roman. Seth wasn't stupid; he knew Roman still didn't care too much for him at the moment, but come on. The sooner they acted on this plan, the quicker Roman got towards being left alone for good. And Seth knew he was still in the building, because when he'd left the gym, he'd spied the silent giant wandering down the hall with his back to him, headed for the pool. He'd given him an hour while he'd gone over the plan in his head, and another thirty minutes in between text messages. It wasn't like he was asking the man to dress up nice and formal just to meet him in the lobby.

Seth's phone buzzes on the table next to him.

 **too many people.**

He raises an eyebrow at Roman's text.

 _okay_ , he replies. _where_?

It takes Roman a few minutes longer to respond, but when he does, Seth finds himself a little wary of how cryptic it sounds.

 **341.**

 **dont be late.**

* * *

Room 341 is a room that Seth isn't familiar with. It's not Roman's or Dean's.

He knocks on the door twice and bounces on the balls of his feet while he waits. The sound of heavy feet on the carpeted floor inside makes him freeze, knowing someone was coming to answer the door- he wishes Roman would just cut the mysterious shit and tell him whose room this was- and the lock comes undone.

"Hey," says John Cena, standing there with one of his kilowatt smiles, "come to join the party?"

Seth rolls his eyes. "Yeah. You guys really need to stop with the cryptic bullshit," he says walking past Cena into the room. Roman, the bastard, is leaned on the table by the balcony window, gray eyes smug with amusement. Dean is lying back on one of the beds like he owns the fucking joint, and waves a lazy two-fingered salute in Seth's direction.

"Seriously, you had me worried," Seth continues, folding his arms over his chest. "And since when did you three get so close?"

"We're not," says Roman. "We're all here for the same reason. You've got something to tell us, yeah?"

Seth looks the man in the eye and nods. "Tomorrow's the Raw taping," he says. He gets a few affirmative grunts from his audience. "I can't exactly say that I'm happy with the way this last week played out –to be honest, I was hoping that we would still have a few weeks secrecy left. But we don't. We've got to put an end to this tomorrow."

"About fucking time," says Dean from the bed. Seth ignores him.

"Tomorrow," he says, "we're calling out Triple h and Stephanie on their bullshit. It won't be easy, but I've got one last trick up my sleeve."

He eyes the three others in the room with a mischievous glimmer in his eye. "How d'you guys feel about a good fight?"

* * *

The thing about secrecy is that whatever is done is supposed to be a _secret_.

Seth didn't know that he'd have to explain that simple concept, but as he finds himself being screamed at, he realizes that maybe he should've taken the time to reiterate.

Monday Night Raw goes as planned it seems. People come and go, have their matches and cut their promos. And then Triple H and his wife make a surprise, impromptu appearance. It goes without saying that everyone is a little confused as to what the power couple is doing out here so late in the show, and as for the two themselves, they seem as pissed as the crowd seems puzzled over being out in the ring.

Triple H motions to ringside for a microphone and begins explaining himself. "Sorry for the interruption, everyone," and his voice doesn't reflect that at all. Instead, he sounds absolutely livid and only barely containing it. "We apologize for stopping the show so suddenly, but there has been a series of accidents that have been called to our attention recently-"

Triple H pauses when his wife grabs his arm and angrily hisses something at him –the mics don't pick it up, whatever she says, but the way she's barking at him doesn't leave much to the imagination.

 _("Accidents?" she hisses. "This was no accident_.")

"But it seems that someone has seen fit to sabotage our wrestlers," Triple H continues after a quick hand motion in Stephanie's direction, the universal sign for ' _calm down'_.

The audience boos and catcalls, but Triple H talks right through it. "Unfortunately, the locker room has been selectively and meticulously picked apart by some 'unknown' group of people. We're working to resolve this issue quickly and professionally; the show will go on."

He pauses, and suddenly rears back like some sort of crazed warlord.

"Do you hear that, Seth Rollins? Dean Ambrose? The show will go on! You, Reigns, Ambrose –you can't beat me at my own game!" the Game shouts into the microphone. Seth kind of has to applaud his old mentor for figuring it out as quickly as he did. It wasn't like they were being very subtle about it, but for all their blatant exhibition, and the fact that they were the only ones in the locker room that hadn't been on the list of injured wrestlers, Hunter did a pretty good job on his own. Congratulations are in order.

"Well, that was easy," says Seth. He steps out from behind the Titantron and out onto the ramp, a grin on his face and the Heavyweight Championship title on his shoulder. He's not dressed in his usual gear –not the black latex the Authority gave him. Instead, he's taken it upon himself to run around causing trouble on his own terms, in his own clothes. He'll be damned if he wears the Authority's colors while he tears them down –its been far too long since the ball has been in his court. He's going to play it out the end.

"I mean, it wasn't that hard to figure it out was it?" Seth says, gauging the venomous look on his former bosses' faces. He takes his sweet time walking down to the ring. "Well, whatever, that's not the point. You're probably wondering how this all happened, aren't you?"

Now its Triple H's turn to smirk, even though it's kind of hard to read it as a confident front when the vein in his left temple is throbbing like it might burst.

He says, "I always knew you were a slimy, two-faced, backstabbing son of a bitch," like he's suddenly got checkmate in this situation. He's fucking wrong.

"Learned from the best," Seth replies with a smile. He can see the rage in Hunter's eyes from the ramp, but before the CEO can act on it, Stephanie intervenes. "What do you want, Seth? I know you've got some motive for all of this. You attack our employees; beat them down so that we're completely defenseless, just you can have an uninterrupted audience with my husband and myself?" she offers him a smile, proud like a mother's, condescending as ever. "Such a smart boy. But if that was all you wanted, you could have just asked. We're always here for our superstars. I must say that I'm surprised you managed to get your old stablemates to put their trust in you again. And all it took was, what, a few titles? Promise of a once-in-a-lifetime match? Money?"

"Liberation, if you must know," is what Seth gives her. "It's been a good run, but let's be real, Stephanie; it's about damn time someone put you in your place."

Stephanie has the gall to look mock-offended. She puts a hand to her chest and blinks innocently. "Why, Seth –those are some big words coming from someone like you," she says sickeningly sweet.

"Someone like me?"

"Yes. Someone who was so starved for power, so easily manipulated by even the slightest whiff of recognition, someone so pathetic, that they sold their soul for it," Stephanie elaborates. She's playing a mind game, and Seth knows it. Either she's either a brilliant actress at keeping her feeling hidden, or something's up.

Seth narrows his eyes at her. "I'm willing to go through hell to get it back."

And then, Stephanie's entire façade contorts. In hindsight, Seth would've pegged her for a psychopath the way she smiled at him, so sweet and cold, before she told him, "Oh, don't worry. You will."

No.

Seth sees them out of the corner of his eye, barely has time to throw away his title belt and pull himself into a defensive stance before six shadows slip into the ring through the ropes and corner him. He doesn't know these people. He can't tell if he'd ever seen them before either because he can't see their faces –all six figures are wearing masks. Not Bray Wyatt's drones, because these aren't lamb masks. They're like ski-masks, the kind that movie burglars wear.

The first one down is smaller than Seth is –it's the one he slugs first. Nothing special, just a straight suckerpunch to the jaw with all of his might, and he has barely enough time to smirk in satisfaction when he feels something break against his knuckles, and then the world is a blur.

Tonight, Seth realizes three things.

One, he totally owes Dean and Roman for actually coming out to help him. While the mercenaries beat Seth like a dog, like they'd been paid to do, he'd kind of had the sinking feeling that maybe Reigns and Ambrose weren't sticking to the plan. Maybe Roman had talked Dean out of it. Maybe they didn't think this was all worth putting their careers in jeopardy.

Seth wouldn't blame them –it wasn't the greatest of ideas to make an enemy out of the boss. But he was sure it would work. This whole plan had to work, or he would die trying.

It looks like he'll be doing the latter at the moment.

Well, until suddenly the boots to his head and chest abruptly halt. They don't completely disappear, but enough falter so that Seth can finally look up and see two of the six mercenaries lying sprawled out on the mat, and a giant figure towering over them.

And then something else is going on to Seth's right, and he can hear the crowd screaming, cheering, so it must've been something –

Oh, it's Dean.

Dean has just tackled Triple H to the mat and is now planting his fist squarely into his face.

A flash of gaudy orange knocks the rest of the mercenaries away out of Seth's vision. John.

This might actually work.

"You okay?" Roman is suddenly asking Seth. He's kneeling over him, though he momentarily rights himself and slugs an oncoming merc.

Seth nods. "I'm okay. They were ready."

And that's the second thing Seth knows. Somehow, Triple H knew that they were planning on rebelling tonight. He'd even hired protection in advance. He'd known they were going to render him vulnerable as far as human shields went. But then, that meant…

And it happens at once, all at once, so quickly and chaotic that it leaves Seth's head spinning.

The sound of a chair slapping against a human body fills the ring. Roman twists in time to find Dean hitting the mat like so much deadweight, Triple H standing over him with the steel chair in question. Cena is just standing there, watching it all happen, watches the mercenaries scramble to their feet and rush Roman, as one of them cracks the heel of their boot across Seth's skull.

Seth's head is spinning like a top and he can barely see past the little black spots dancing across his vision. But he knows where he is –lying on the floor outside of the ring; how did that happen?- and he can still make out the figures of John and Triple H, talking with their hands. Well, more like arguing.

They aren't fighting, though, and that's the issue.

Roman's fight with the mercenaries has taken him outside the ring. He's a big guy, sure; the most muscular one out of every one of them. But even he is having trouble keeping all of the masked men at bay. They've all but forgotten about Seth leaning heavily against the steel steps nearest the announce table. This isn't working.

Something moves in Seth's peripheral vision. Stephanie. Damn, he'd forgotten about her.

When Seth sees her fully, she's holding something in her hands. She's smiling up at Triple H, who is steadily ignoring John as he shouts at him, and she hands the offending item to her husband through the ring ropes. Dean still hasn't moved.

Triple H circles his fallen prey with his sledgehammer in tow. The smile on his face matches the same sadistic one stretched across his wife's, and instantly Seth knows what is about to happen. Hunter grinds the heel of his black leather shoes into Dean's chest, and only then does Seth see movement from the formerly motionless man. His hands go towards Hunter's ankle, trying feebly to pry the foot from his chest. Hunter leans down and shouts something at him, cackling like some cheesy old-timey movie villain, except this isn't a movie, and no one else is laughing. He glances up momentarily, catches Seth's eye from the ring steps.

"This is on your hands," he shouts, spinning the sledgehammer in his grip idly. Stephanie thinks that's hilarious; Seth can hear her laughing on his left. Hunter raises the hammer, glaring icy daggers into Dean's head.

Roman is still preoccupied with the mercs, tosses one over the barricade and stumbles on dizzy feet to face the others; he won't make it in time.

Shit.

Seth sends a prayer to whoever is upstairs listening and bolts.

 _(please let me be fast enough)_

He's moving, sliding, palms hit the mat and-

 _(crack)_

 _..._

He missed.

Hunter missed.

* * *

Dean is surprisingly not wasted, and is indeed alive. He's warm, feels heavy. Can't breathe. Why?

Dean's been staring up the whole time, meeting Hunter's intense glare with an icy one of his own; defiant, he'd be damned if he wasn't going to go down swinging.

He sees Seth. He's so close. He can see his eyes, brown like dishwater, staring directly into Dean's, dull and marble-like. He looks scared.

 _(crack)_

Dean flinches this time. Not from the noise –though it's deafening and definitely wrong- and suddenly Seth isn't looking at him anymore. Dean can sit up now, prop himself up on his elbows and stare down at his former best friend, lying still on the mat next to him, halfway in his lap and halfway sprawled across Hunter's shoes.

Triple H looks almost as surprised as Dean does, as Stephanie standing outside the ring watching it all go down. But not unpleasantly surprised.

Dean's head hurts. He sees red.

* * *

Seth sees Dean. Dean's shoving him off, turning Seth on his side in the process, and crouching in front of him like a feral dog. He won't look at him. He's looking at someone else.

Then he's screaming, jumping at Triple H and raining blow after hard blow to his former bosses head. It goes on forever, Dean screaming, and some woman's voice is added to the mix.

Stephanie, _right_.

And there's blood mixed with spit flying everywhere, and its so loud. Seth wants to get up. His body just feels so heavy; his eyelids feel like they're made of iron. He can see the telltale black spots dancing along the edges of his vision. He holds out long enough to see something big and black slide into the ring and finally stop the screaming and the spit and blood. Roman.

Roman is dragging Dean away from their bloodied up boss, dripping red from his mouth and nose and looking positively livid behind the puffiness of an inevitable black left eye. And then there's orange.

John. Oh. _Right_.

And they see him, turn their fury on him too.

"We never should've trusted you!"

It comes from Dean, standing over Seth while the latter looks on, bruised and battered. Dean looks absolutely livid, blue eyes blazing. Seth can see his fists shaking, muscles tremoring, and all he can think of now is how he hadn't meant for this to happen.

He sees now; they really shouldn't have trusted him.

It was John, all along.

* * *

 **had to make an edit: a couple people thought that it was Seth fighting triple h. context has been added because that is not correct.**

 **-ac**


	8. Chapter 8

guess who's finished with finals?

consider this the teeniest of tiny presents for me finally getting my shit together.

* * *

 _It was John, all along._

* * *

Roman has honestly no idea what has just happened.

He elbows the unlucky mercenary behind him in the jaw, knocking him to the floor with a loud grunt, and looks up in time for the world to stop spinning. His lips are bloody –the guys in black got him good a few times, but not nearly as bad as what they'd done to Seth. Roman doubted he even knew that he was starting to bruise like an apple.

Roman's eyes land on the ring, and once he stops seeing double, he can make out the vague scene in front of him, and still realize immediately that, _wow_ , this is not good.

Hunter has gotten his hands on a sledgehammer. He's raised it over his head now, aiming for something at his feet. Dean.

Shit.

But, instead of Dean's brains splattering across the mat, suddenly Seth is crouched over Dean, on his hands and knees, hanging over him like a shield against the hammer's blows. It comes down once, hard across his back, and even from the floor, Roman can see the tendons in Seth's arms shaking, and judging from the way Hunter has paused momentarily in his torture, not even he was expecting Seth to just step in and take the shot. But Seth waits for it a second time, enduring the next crack of the hammer with much less strength keeping his body upright than the first time –dumb kid has had about as much as he could take, and Hunter sure as hell isn't pulling his punches. The second time, Seth goes down, just collapses bonelessly over Dean, and Roman makes note to remind himself to punch that kid in the head for such a dumb, risky gambit of a rescue.

And then Dean is moving, shoving Seth aside with little grace but just enough care, and now he's the one protecting Seth. Roman can't see the damage from where he's standing, but he knows it isn't a good sign when Seth doesn't move.

Dean is busting his knuckles across Hunter's face. Stephanie, wherever she's hiding, is screaming at Dean to stop, for someone to drag this madman off of her husband. With the mercenaries gone, Roman takes it upon himself to answer that call. No point in wasting time beating the brains out of the Cerebral Assassin when it won't do anything but piss him off even more in the end. Climbing into the ring, Roman makes eye-contact with Cena, and something doesn't feel right.

Cena's just standing there, letting it all happen. He'd been standing still for a while now, even when the mercs got the jump on Roman. As he's pulling a spitting, rampaging Dean off of Hunter –and nearly succeeds in tearing the expensive looking dress shirt Hunter's wearing in the process (Dean has his nails curled into him like a fucking cat)- he hears Dean shout something. Its lewd and crude and he really hopes the mic didn't pick that up.

"We never should have trusted you!" shouts Dean. He's saying it to John, who looks at a loss.

Torn.

Guilty as fuck, too.

"Dean," Roman grunts, narrowly avoiding a broken nose when Dean violently throws his head back in the midst of all his thrashing, "get a grip, man. It's over, okay? You got 'im."

"Fuck you," Dean is still shouting, and wow, Roman _really_ hopes the mics don't pick that up. "Fuck you, Cena!"

And then, Dean twists himself out of Roman's grip. Thinking he's trying to go for round two with Cena, Roman immediately reaches out to grab him, and is colossally surprised when Dean goes to see to Seth unprompted. He crouches down next to him, turns him over onto his back and takes his shoulders in his hands. "Seth," Dean is calling. "Wake up."

Roman reaches out and touches Dean's shoulder, recoiling when Dean whirls around with wild eyes, all attack mode. "Watch my six, will you? I've got him, don't worry."

Dean still looks like a feral animal, but he nods and slides out of the ring, prowling up and down the length of it like a guard dog. Roman shoulders Seth and exits after. Roman asks, "Can you walk, kid?"

Seth gurgles something in response, half conscious, head bowed and leaning most of his weight against Roman. Roman takes that as a weak ' _maybe'_ , and a strong ' _no'_ , and nods to Dean, who immediately shoulders Seth's other arm and helps them stumble back up the ramp. He doesn't miss the death glare that Dean shoots back over his shoulder towards the ring. He's coming back with a vengeance for sure; they'd better beware.

* * *

Roman has to carry Seth by the time they drag themselves behind gorilla position, yet he still insists, sounding so tired that his words kind of start to mesh together, "I'm fine, Roman. _Really_."

Roman snorts. "Shut up. You aren't fine; you can barely stand on your own two feet," he growls. He's not mad, he just sounds that way. Well, at least he's not mad at _Seth_. If it wasn't one, it was the other.

But _John Cena_ of all fucking people. Why him? He was the ultimate good guy; he was Superman, for crying out loud! If he was anymore golden, he'd be twenty-four karat. He'd be his own currency.

He wasn't supposed to stab people in the back.

With Seth slipping in and out of consciousness, there's no way Roman can get answers out of him this way, and even if he could, he wasn't sure that Seth would have them anyway. He was just as clueless as the rest of them, if a sledgehammer to the skull had anything to offer in lieu of his innocence.

And really, was Hunter trying to kill him? Granted, he'd been aiming for Dean's skull, but if Seth hadn't come and used his own body as a shield, Dean would definitely be wrestling matches in the big ring above the clouds right now.

Seth keeps mumbling, trying to assure Roman that he's okay. He eventually goes quiet, and Roman can breathe a sigh of relief that Seth's finally succumbed to some semblance of unconsciousness. At least that counts as some kind of rest.

Dean reaches over and cards his fingers through Seth's hair, tugging on it at the roots. "Stupid fucking kid," he mumbles softly. "Who told you to go and take that hit for me?"

Roman shrugs, kind of hard to do with his arms full of Seth. "If he hadn't done it, I would've."

Dean acts like he doesn't hear him. "I told him I don't need him to save me. He's just stubborn."

"Like you aren't?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."

Roman shifts Seth's weight in his arms. It isn't that Seth is very heavy; he's still rather light from his stint with starvation. It's just that Roman wasn't prepared to be carrying him to the trainer's office for a sledgehammer whack to his head. That wasn't the plan. He was honestly beginning to wonder if the plan was on the verge of collapsing in on itself; if it hadn't already.

"Roman," comes a voice from down the hallway. It's a voice that neither of them wants to hear, the voice that warrants a punch in the face, and maybe a beating on the side. It's a voice that stops both Dean and Roman in their tracks, turn them around.

It's Cena.

He stops mid-step, like he can sense the hatred rolling off of the pair in waves. Stops in the middle of the hallway, mouth opening like he might say something, but he decides against it at the last minute. Probably a good idea.

Cena glances at Roman, at Seth in his arms, then down at the floor. He takes a deep breath, says, "I…I can explain."

"Fucking save it," Dean growls, and is maybe a second or two away from throwing himself at Cena like a feral attack dog when Roman intervenes. "Dean," he rumbles low in his chest. "We don't have time." It feels like he's trying to appease a small child when he shoves Seth at Dean. "Here, take him," he tells him quietly. "I'll take care of this. You'll get us kicked out of here."

Dean looks between Roman and john, blue eyes darting like a trapped animal. Roman feels like his own eye is twitching in anticipation; but eventually Dean relents, barking at John, "This ain't over, Cena. Not by a fucking long shot."

And then he's gone.

Roman looks at John. "Start explaining. You've got maybe five minutes before Dean gets back here, and I might just let him have your ass."

To his credit, John raises his hands in placation. "I only need five."

"So start talking."

John nods, takes another deep breath.

"This wasn't what I wanted to happen," John starts out, which is really not the best thing to say when the man standing in front of you could easily plow you into the ground, "and I know that's not what you want to hear-"

Smart.

"-but it's the truth. I really was all in on the plan from the beginning; that much was genuine. But the night that Kharma came back to the ring, Triple H…" John sighs, runs his hand through his hair. "Triple H got to me. He pulled me over and made me spill everything."

Roman is unimpressed. "So Trips threatens you once and you automatically turn chicken shit and rat us out?" he growls.

Something ticks in John's jaw; good, he's angry too.

"It wasn't me he threatened, Reigns," he says, voice still oddly calm. "It was Nikki."

* * *

Dean goes to the trainers.

He's in the locker room now –Seth's to be exact, because Trips and Steph still give him his own for some odd reason- sitting against the wall with Seth's stuff at his side. He'd taken the liberty of grabbing Seth's stuff, gathering it up for him since he was currently totally out of it and not moving. He'd looked pallid and pale when Dean had left him, but Dean doesn't make much sense of that. Right now, he's too caught up in the fact that he'd been betrayed yet again.

Damn it.

This was Seth's fault. He was far too trusting, dumb kid. He should know not to trust every smiling face out there; hell, he'd practically written the book on that shit when he single-handedly destroyed the Shield. And now, he was paying for it.

Dean smirks coldly. "Doesn't feel so good to be on the other side, does it?"

Of course he doesn't get an answer. He's got the thousand-yard stare; all the vitriol that he'd been packing towards the Authority and Cena had gone unchecked, gone to his head, made his head all warm and dizzy and buzzing, buzzing with too many emotions.

He's not even mad at Seth, really. That was a mean thing to say earlier.

He just wants him to wake up. He wants him to wake up and tell Dean that everything's going to be fine; he's got a plan. He's always has a plan.

Dean taps a strained beat against his collarbone with his fingers. His head droops back against the concrete wall, the cool surface doing nothing for his burning head.

"Tell me you've got a plan."

* * *

"Why Nikki?" asks Roman.

Surely Trips wouldn't try to put his hands on her, right? He may be a piece of shit, but even he had standards, as hard as that was to believe.

John says, "Because she's my weakness. If I didn't want them to take the title off of her and leave her out of a job or worse," and even Roman, for all his anger at the moment, didn't like the sound of that – _or worse_ \- "I'd tell them what I knew as far as what Seth has having us do. Triple H knows what and when and how you guys are going to take him out. Unless Seth can outsmart him and Stephanie, this entire project is over."

* * *

Roman is all but running down the hall to the trainers.

He's still rightfully miffed at Cena's double cross and Triple H's lack of any fucking humanity; who threatens someone's girlfriend's livelihood like that? Who tries to kill their employees with a _sledgehammer to the cranium_?

John's voice is still buzzing around in his ears.

* * *

 _"Unless Seth can outsmart him and Stephanie, this entire project is over." John goes quiet to let that sink in. "Honestly, I really did care about what happened to Seth. You don't have to believe me, but I thought I should let you know."_

 _Roman is maybe seconds away from leaving, turning right around and making a beeline for the trainers' office, when he remembers something. Maybe John had good intentions in his own way, but he'd still almost gotten two of Roman's friends potentially injured; it was only fair that Roman dug the knife in a little deeper._

 _"You know," he starts, grey eyes hard and loud like summer thunderstorms as they land on John once more, "Seth was the only one of us who really trusted you from the get-go. He really, really trusted you. You'd better square things up with that kid when he wakes up, Cena," he says, voice deep and dangerous like a dark cave, daring any kind of mistake on John's part, "or I don't have to remind you who all you'll have to deal with."_

 _Roman turns and leaves without much else fanfare. Not like he needed any._

* * *

Roman's not too sure what to think of John at the moment. On one hand, he had only been trying to protect his girlfriend. But on the other, he'd started a downward spiral in the entire scheme that Seth had worked himself sick to devise. Things might not have been totally fixed between himself and Seth, but the kid had done good. At least by Dean.

It was only fair that Roman stood up for Seth too.

He'll do what he can.

Seth is still out cold when Roman gets to the trainers'. Dean's there, must've left and come back at some point; his and the other's bags are sitting by the door. He looks up when Roman comes in, and Roman can already feel the questions about to roll off of him in hot, angry waves.

"What's the verdict," he asks, to distract Dean from shotgunning all of those questions at him. Dean walks over and leans against the door with Roman, crossing his arms over his chest. Roman can see the tendons in his arms, coiled and probably itching to slug the nearest poor sucker in the face, which, at the moment, was probably Roman.

"Concussion," Dean says, his voice oddly quiet. "Said he'll be out for a while." Dean shakes his head. "Blunt force trauma."

Roman nods. No doubt Seth will be up later, coming up with a way to get out this mess.

"What about John?" Dean asks.

"He had his reasons," is all Roman says. He'll wait until they're all together to discuss details; Seth would need to hear them too.


	9. finale

**thank you everyone who read and reviewed and followed and generally liked this story. i had way more fun than i though i actually would, so i'm looking forward to doing more in the future.**

 **-AC**

* * *

"What about John?" Dean asks.

"He had his reasons," is all Roman says. He'll wait until they're all together to discuss details; Seth would need to hear them too.

* * *

Seth wakes up with a killer headache and –fuck, his back is killing him.

He vaguely remembers the hours before –hours? Days? It feels like he's been asleep for years-remembers running, fighting. Remembers…Dean.

He breathes in sharply, almost catapulting straight up and –oh, bad idea. His head swims and the once dull pounding behind his eyes begins pulsing out an erratic drumbeat and everything hurts.

"Oh," someone says quietly from somewhere above Seth. " _Shit_."

What are _they_ so upset about? Seth's the one feeling like death warmed over!

Seth groans, make some kind of noise that even he doesn't register. What was he even trying to say?

"Hey," says the voice again, and Seth feels something cool hit his forehead, "stay still, _Jesus_. Don't want you passing out again."

Seth immediately flinches away from the icy sensation on his skin, prompting the person taking care of him to huff in frustration. "Sorry," says the voice gruffly. "But I need you to stay still, okay?"

Okay. Okay, wait, Seth knows this voice. He summons forth all of his strength in order to crack his eyes open, will his eyelids to stay open despite them feeling like they've been weighed down with iron. God, he's tired. "Dean," he croaks.

His vision is blurry and wet-looking, but the watery looking shape hovering over him is easily recognizable.

"Yeah," growls Dean softly, "I'm here. How's your head?"

"Feels like I got hit in the head with a brick," Seth grumbles, half-intelligible. He misses Dean nod, shrug. "Close enough," says the blonde.

"What?"

"You don't remember? You fuckin' idiot…" Dean shakes his head and goes back to what he was doing on Seth's side. Looks like he's making cold compresses out of ice blocks in plastic baggies. He wraps them up in towels and puts these on Seth's forehead and occasionally under his back, lifting him up by the shoulders and sliding them underneath.

Seth hears someone else in the room, somewhere behind Dean, and suddenly Roman materializes close to Seth's head. "You were supposed to tell me when he woke up," he says, talking to Dean, but looking down at Seth. "You feel sick at all?"

That's for Seth.

"I feel like I'd rather be dead. But I'll manage," says Seth, still trying to get used to be awake. He's in a hotel room; the other's probably brought him here after…after….

"Where's…" Seth trails off. His mind is still so fuzzy, and the name he wants is on the tip of his tongue, but something tickles in the back of his brain. Like he isn't supposed to say that name; it's taboo.

Dean looks rightfully pissed, and eventually Seth remembers.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

* * *

Roman won't lie.

He does feel bad when the realization settles in Seth's eyes. His expression is still clouded with the aftermath of the sledgehammer to his skull, but he sobers up a little when everything comes flooding back to him. For the most part he looks disappointed, confused, kind of like a little kid who couldn't quite grasp the concept of death.

Seth nods as best he can, nothing needs to be said. For a while, he just closes his eyes and lets Dean pile ice bags on top of his forehead. Then he says, "Did he at least say why?"

Roman nods, sits on the edge of the bed and gestures for Dean to join at the foot. Something had to give.

"It was a lost cause from the start," says Roman, skipping the pleasantries. Seth never did like to sugar coat things anyway. "Turns out Cena was playing for the other team the whole time. Trips and Steph got in his head and threatened him with Nikki's job unless he snitched on us. You were right; they knew we were planning on tearing them down tonight. They know the whole plan now, and there's no telling what they're gonna do now."

Seth sighs, heavy and deep. It's a tired sigh, but Roman can hear the disappointment down deep. He doesn't know what Cena was to Seth, but whatever it was, it must've been close enough that the betrayal cut deep enough to hurt. He knew that feeling all too well.

"Dean," says Seth suddenly enough for the man in question to look surprised. "Are you okay? Nothing's broken?"

Dean barks out a laugh that visibly startles Seth and shakes his head. "I should be asking you that, dumbass. What the hell were you thinking pulling a stunt like that?"

Dean is laughing, but there's no humor in it. He's serious.

Seth remembers the sledgehammer then. He remembers running, trying to reach the ring before Triple H knocked Dean's head off his shoulders. He remembers the first ham-fisted swing, connecting with his back –the bruises are there, purple and black between his shoulder blades pounding with agony. He doesn't remember the next swing, but he doesn't need much evidence that the next blow connected with his head –his skull feels like a split watermelon, like a concussion, but ten times worse.

"He was gonna hit you in the head with a fucking hammer," Seth slurs out, noting how stupid that sounds but it was true, wasn't it? That's not even a good enough answer for Dean, and apparently not enough for Roman either, who shakes his head on Seth's side.

"And what? You were trying to stop him by throwing yourself in front of me?" says Dean. "Are you fucking insane? If you had moved just a little bit to the side or something, he could've killed you!"

"Fuck off," Seth grumbles. "Like you taking the heat would've been any fucking better."

"It damn sure would've been," and suddenly Dean is shouting and Seth doesn't know _why_ he's fighting him on this. "I would've been fine. I can take it, but you…."

Seth wants to interject here. Dean is talking like Seth is fucking helpless, a damsel in distress, a little fragile thing that needs to be protected. He's the _youngest_ , not the _most useless_. He wants to say all of that, but Dean is shouting some more and can't hear Seth.

"I told you; I don't need you to take a bullet for me. What were we supposed to do if you fucking got your head smashed in, huh? Did you even think of that?"

Dean's voice is making Seth's head hurt. So he placates. "You're right," Seth says slowly, "I wasn't thinking about that. I was trying to make sure my boss didn't kill my best friend, so fucking sorry about that. And who do you think you are?"

Dean eyes are wide. "What? Who do _I_ think I am?"

Seth fixes him with as venomous a glare as he can with his eyes still feeling like sheets of metal. "You were part of the most dominant force in the company once," and yeah, he's about to go there, "there is no way on this earth that you would've just fell apart if I wasn't here. You're Dean fucking Ambrose. You don't give up and you don't die. You would've found a way. You always do. You and Roman would've been okay."

Dean looks at him. Roman's gaze is boring into the side of Seth's head too, because, wow. Did he really just say…

Dean stands up like he's been burned and yanks hard on his hair. He's roaring like some wild animal, and then he's shouting at Seth again. "That's not the fucking point! I just…" he shouts again, and then disappears, storming into the bathroom. He slams the door shut and a few moments later the shower is running.

Seth blinks, confused, and then sighs. He turns his head gingerly in Roman's direction and blinks softly.

"What about you, big guy? You okay? Or do you wanna shout at me too?"

Roman watches him carefully, like he might be gauging what he wants to say. He shakes his head. "Nah. I'm okay. Let's just worry about getting you back on your feet," Roman rumbles eventually. "You're gonna be on the sidelines for a while. Trainers said you've got blunt force trauma from the sledgehammer; concussion. I think we made it worse letting you fall asleep like that."

Seth waves him off weakly. He'd feel better eventually. After all, he was no stranger to this type of thing; he'd jumped off the titantron once for God's sake!

"I'll be fine. I've got work to do anyway," he assures Roman, and Roman isn't quite sure if Seth is saying that to make himself feel better either. "Gotta work around the flashback."

"Setback."

"Isn't that what I said?"

Roman grins beside himself and ruffles Seth's hair. "Rest. I'll be back; I have to go find something to feed the black hole in the shower."

* * *

Dean comes out after a while, damp with condensation from the shower steam. The air smells like whatever soap Dean is using –its not the body wash that Seth got him hooked on back when they were a faction, and Seth isn't sure why he noticed- and Dean pads into view in a pair of sweatpants. He has a shirt he was probably going to wear curled in his fist.

It's the scent of soap that wakes Seth up again. He sees Dean wandering around and mumbles loudly, "Put a fucking shirt on."

Dean turns to him and gives him a lopsided grin. "You can't make me."

Seth blinks languidly. "I sense a disturbance in the Force."

"What?" Dean raises an eyebrow. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Seth shrugs as best he can lying on his back. "It's _Star Wars_ , man. Are you mad at me?"

Dean sighs, his back to Seth as he rummages around in his bag. When he turns back, Dean vaults over Seth's legs and sprawls out as much as he can in the space next to him, replying, "Livid, but I love you, so it's really not that bad."

Seth looks down at Dean, poking at his fluffy hair brushing against his hip. "How do you not know _Star_ _Wars_?" he asks him, totally ignoring Dean's explanation. He's still feeling the concussion; everything is still out of whack as far as his train of thought goes.

"I do know _Star Wars_ ," Dean retorts. "I'm just not a fucking nerd like you."

Seth grunts incomprehensibly in acknowledgement, closing his eyes. "M'not a nerd. I love you too, but you did shout at me after I tried to save your life," he says drowsily. He misses the way Dean's head snaps up to look at him, eyes wide and shocked. He also misses the way disappointed realization changes Dean's whole façade when he understands.

"I shouted at you because I care," Dean says slowly. "I just told you I liked your dumb ass; I don't want to lose you like that."

Seth breathes out sharply, laughing. "Fuckin' softy."

"Am not."

But Seth persists, chanting, "softy, softy, softy," poking Dean's chest with his finger. Dean sighs heavily. "Why do I like you?"

"You don't like me; you love me," Seth reminds him, sounding like he's drifting between sleep and waking. "S'okay. Love you too."

Seth feels Dean shift positions next to him, propping himself up on his elbow. "Run that by me again."

It's not even a question.

"What? Love you too."

"One more time."

Seth turns his head, focusing his cloudy dark eyes somewhere close to meeting Dean's. It takes him a moment to realize how close he his. When did that happen?

"Love you too."

His mouth is moving without his mind; the repetitive action easier for his momentarily scattered brains to keep up with. He does have a moment to wonder why Dean is making him repeat himself-

Oh.

Dean's voice is really quiet, barely audible. "Say it again."

Seth starts, "Love-" and is promptly stopped when Dean presses himself against him. Dean's never been one to shy away from being outright. It shouldn't shock Seth so much that he's basically being snogged by his best friend, but it doesn't bother him as much as one would think. Maybe that's the concussion talking. His head still hurts.

He won't think about it too much. He'll just let Dean kiss him for now.

He notices, vaguely, that Dean hasn't shaved; he can feel stubble brushing prickly and itchy across his skin. It's not that Seth is just content to lie back and think of England while Dean argues with himself between throwing caution to the wind and playing some serious tonsil hockey and settling for grade-school butterfly kisses. It's just a little to take in at the moment. How was he supposed to know Dean wanted to stick his tongue down his throat?

Seth can't really understand; _did_ he want to let Dean stick his tongue down his throat? That wasn't exactly the number one thing on his list of things to think about, just sit and ponder over a cup of tea. Maybe he likes Dean's dimples, the way his whole faced changes when he smiles. Maybe he likes the way Dean had a tendency to dance tiny dances when someone was talking to him. Maybe he likes the awful jokes and his crude nature and the metaphors and analogies that sometimes got miles away from him.

Seth likes it when Dean ruins a peaceful moment with a really out-of-place comment. He likes it when Dean abruptly bursts out in bouts of song, even when he doesn't know the words. He likes the quiet moments when they used to collapse in their hotel room, covered in ice packs and doused on ibuprofen after a hard night, when he could just sit and count the scars covering the expanse of Dean's back. Of course he knew all their stories; he and Roman and Dean had all been together long enough to know the backstories behind Dean's scars. But Seth had been the first to know.

Seth had been the one to know first, having the stories be whispered to him in the dead of night when they were supposed to be sleeping, lying on opposite ends of the bed in the dark talking about anything and everything.

That strikes a chord in the core of Seth's being. His head hurts and his back aches, and the wounded feeling of past regrets makes it all the more painful.

Seth mumbles something past Dean's lips. Dean pulls back. "What?"

Seth screws his eyes shut. "Head hurts."

Dean looks like he might say something, but suddenly Roman is there, and when did he even get inside?

It must've been a minute; he's leaned against the corner, trying to look like he'd just walked in, when in reality he'd probably been there for a few minutes. Spectating. Fucking creep.

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, looking as awkward as the scene feels. He holds up a plastic bag, almost in explanation for his own being there, says, "I brought food," and that's that.

* * *

"I can't believe you kissed him," Roman says later on.

"How long were you watching?" and to his credit, Dean doesn't even sound even a little bit ashamed. He can't see Roman shrug in the dark, but he hears him say, "I walked in and then you guys were pulling away. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what you two were doing."

Roman snorts then. "Can't believe you _kissed_ him."

* * *

Seth gets jumped the next week.

It's no fucking surprise. Not after the little stunt he pulled last week on Raw. Of course he'd have a huge target painted on his back, but he wouldn't have expected the ammunition used against him would sting so badly.

Sure, he's fine. Sort of.

When Seth rolls over onto his side, his cheek pressed against the cold concrete floor, and coughs, he knows something's not right. He groans, wraps his arm around his chest; ribs must be busted. He could've sworn something shattered within him when Sheamus' and Owens' boots connected with his body. And of course they'd forced John into it; adding insult to injury, the bastards. He stood off to the side, looking uncomfortable and contrite, and only butted in to break it up when he thought the violence was too much.

Cena stays with him until help arrives, then when the trainers come, he's gone. Seth thinks Triple H and Steph set their beasts on him as punishment; a vision of things to come if he kept fucking around with them. He doesn't realize that it's already too late for warnings and premonitions. It's when the trainers tell him that there is no way he can compete due to his broken ribs and already concussed head that Seth realizes what the Authority is playing at.

"We regret to inform you," says Stephanie into the microphone; the bitch doesn't even have the decency to keep the smug, almost psychotic, smile off of her face, "that your WWE champion has been injured recently and, from what information the doctors have given me on his condition, will not be allowed to compete. Therefore, as much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, we have no choice to implement the thirty day policy."

Stephanie turns towards the ramp in the middle of the ring where everyone can see her and call her out on her bullshit together. "Seth Rollins," she crows, "we're vacating your championship."

That bitch.

Seth stares up at the monitor in the trainer's office. He can feel Dean radiating rage and silent mulishness from Roman on his other side, so he sets his jaw. "No," he mutters, catching the attention of both his teammates. "If we lose that title, we lose the progress we've made. We've worked too hard for this."

They don't realize Seth's getting up until he's already out the door. They catch up to him, shirtless and still with the tape wrapped around his ribs, bruises still unchecked. "What are you doing?" Dean asks, having to almost trot alongside Seth in order to keep up.

"I'm gonna fix this," is all Seth says cryptically. "This is the last time Stephanie will ever do this."

Even though his two teammates have a couple extra inches and pounds on him, neither Dean nor Roman put up much of a fight against Seth when they realize where he's going. His rage is palpable. Seth storms right into the gorilla position, snatches a microphone from one of the stage crew, and makes his way down the ramp like a bat out of hell.

"Hey!" he shouts, even though his voice is automatically amplified by the microphone. Still, it startles Stephanie a little; her back had been to the ramp while she babbled on and on about the consequences of crossing the Authority. Small victory.

"How about you stop running your mouth and pay attention to what's really important," Seth says. Stephanie looks rightfully surprised to see him out here, and even more so when Seth starts speaking again. "There will be no vacated championship, alright? I'm still standing; I'm still breathing. I can still fight whoever wants to come after my title."

Stephanie's eyes narrow. "And who are you to be making those kinds of decisions, Seth?" she asks. "You're not a CEO. You're not a COO. You're not a Director of Operations. You aren't anything." She pauses to let the venom in her voice seep into Seth's core, leans forward as a test to gauge his reaction. "You're a half-baked little kid playing dress-up in a legend's boots. You don't deserve that title; you don't get to make the rules here. You have no power. You have _nothing_."

Seth smirks. "Well then I guess this thing here is just a really fancy bracelet then, huh?" he holds up the championship belt to the delight of the crowd. Sassy Seth was best Seth.

"Look, Steph," he continues, not bothering to acknowledge the death glare given to him for the unprofessional shortening of her name, "I know what you want. I know what this is all about. And you know what I want. How about we address the elephant in the room and make it easier on both of us? Can we get a couple chairs in here?"

Seth had been asking the ringside hands, but Stephanie holds up a hand. "Ignore that," she tells them, voice low and dangerous. She's serious now, good and shaken up. "You wanna negotiate, Rollins?" she spits. "Let's get on with it. You say you know what I want, huh?"

Seth grins at her. "You want control of your company back. You want me out of the picture, because after all, I'm an insubordinate brat, right? You want the title on someone else. Someone you can trust and manipulate to do your dirty work. You don't like that I'm trying to make a comeback and overthrow your precious Authority. You wanna make me suffer, right?"

Judging from the murderous glint in her eyes, Stephanie probably wanted to drive a railroad spike through Seth's chest; 'suffer' was actually looking a little weak right now. "Well, Mr. Rollins, you're not wrong. Now, allow me to surmise what it is that _you_ want."

Seth nods, giving her the go-ahead. Like she even needed it.

"You want the Authority gone, right?" she begins. "You want to use your pull as champion to stop our," Stephanie makes air-quotes, "'dictatorship'. Simple enough. I applaud you on your sudden growth of a conscience, Seth. And while I'm at, congrats on growing a backbone, too."

The crowd 'oohs' at the obvious jab, but all Seth can do is shrug.

"But your hatred is misplaced," Stephanie continues once the majority of the noise dies down. "It's not me you should be mad at. You should blame yourself. If you hadn't been so selfish, so eager to prove that you were somehow better than those two failures you used to call your friends, then your entire reign as champion wouldn't have been such a disappointment. We're here because you couldn't prove yourself as the champion that could defend this company. You let John Cena bring us out of power once, do you remember? That was when we knew that you weren't worth the paper your contract was printed on."

And then she has the gall to reach out and rest her hand on Seth's shoulder. "It's been hard on you. Don't you think I know what a starving puppy looks like? You just weren't ready. But I'll tell you what, once the thirty days are up and you still aren't able to compete, at least you won't have to worry about proving to anyone else that you aren't a complete and total screw-up."

It takes every ounce of willpower Seth has not to just swat the microphone out of Stephanie's hands. ' _you wouldn't hit a woman_ ,' the voice in his head warns him, ' _you don't hit women. Calm down. She's playing you.'_

Oddly enough, it's Cena's voice telling him this. That makes him a little more livid.

"Give me a name."

Seth is almost surprised to hear that. At first, he doesn't know where the voice came from, but when he spots Stephanie's obviously startled expression, he knows that low, dangerous growl had come from him.

"Excuse me?" Stephanie says. Seth repeats himself, and even he hasn't heard himself sound so…calmly violent. It sounds like he might explode any moment, the calm before the storm. He'd give her hell howling, or die trying.

"Give me a name. Anyone you wanna pick to beat this title off of me," explains Seth. "I'll fight 'em. I've come this far, Stephanie. I'm not going down without a fight."

The crowd takes exception to that.

"If I win, the Authority's gone. For good this time, and yeah, I think as the champion I've got enough power to take you down. If I lose," Seth pauses, licks his lips, "if I lose, you can have the championship. We don't even have to wait on the thirty day stipulation. You can have the title, you can have the Authority. You can have my job. You can beat me down. Pick a name. This ends now."

Stephanie's lips curl back in snarl. Her eyes are bright and hungry, like the cold eyes of a shark, and from where Seth is standing, he can see her shaking ever so slightly. She's pissed. Good.

"You're on," she snarls. "One week. No disqualifications. Hope you're ready, Rollins, because you're about to die trying."

Seth matches her predatory smirk full-force. "I can't wait."

Stephanie shakes her head, like she's already won in her own head. "You're making a huge mistake, Rollins," she murmurs, away from the microphones and everyone's hearing. It's just between her and Seth now. She brushes past him and helps herself out of the ring, already starting up the ramp, when she suddenly stops and turns sharply on her heel.

"Oh, and by the way," she calls, now speaking into the microphone. "What about your friends, Seth? If you lose, and you aren't here to back them up, what do you think will happen to them?"

Seth eyes her suspiciously. And then it clicks. The microphones can't pick his voice up. "What did you do?"

Stephanie smiles sweetly and reiterates. "What do you think is happening to them now?"

She laughs and Seth bolts.

His lungs are burning in his broken chest when he finally skids to a stop backstage in the cargo bay. His ribs hurt as his lungs expand for more air, more air, more fucking air, and he hears coughing coming from Dean on his left. Dean, who is crumpled on the floor, spitting a mouthful of blood across the linoleum. His arm is drawn in close against his chest, and he keeps wincing each time he moves, trying to reach Roman across the hall. Roman is no better, running the back of his wrist across his nose and smearing the athletic tape red.

"Shit," he hisses. He looks up when he notices Seth in the hallway, and is maybe seconds away from shouting at him to look out, when Seth catches movement out of the corner of his eye. It only takes the split second that Seth whirls around for the end of the sledgehammer to connect with his head. He'd be lying if he said it didn't already feel familiar by now.

"See you in a week," comes the voice of his boss over his head. And then Hunter is stepping over him, followed by the sounds of Sheamus' dumb accent and Kevin Owens throwing out insults.

Seth struggles to his elbows, frantically surveying the hallway through his tousled hair for Dean and Roman, only to find them making their way over to him. The world is kind of shifty and he gets the sensation that he's swaying from side to side, but at least he's conscious and recognizes his friends when they address him.

"Damn," and this is Dean speaking in tight hisses. "You okay, kid?"

"I'm okay. What about you?" is what Seth's brain is telling him to say, but all that comes out of Seth's mouth is some garbled nonsense that no one understands. What was with the sudden regular sledgehammers to the head all of sudden? Of course he gets another concussion just a week before he has to have the most important fight of his life. At least they didn't break the rest of his ribs; he can sleep off a concussion. Maybe Dean will kiss him again.

Hm. Odd thought.

"'r not gonna kiss me 'gain r'you?" Seth slurs at Dean, grinning weakly. Ugh, why did he say that? Not very attractive. And if the world doesn't stop spinning soon, he might just throw up. "M'head hurts."

So he just collapses into Dean's lap, just to make the world stop spinning for a little while. He can't fall asleep with a concussion or he might not wake up, so he focuses on Dean looking down at him.

"Yeah, well, don't fall asleep," Dean says, voice rough from the beating he'd just endured. He pauses for moment and frowns. He crosses his arms over Seth's chest, pulling him back against him. "Do you…" he starts off quietly, then starts again, "did you _want_ me to kiss you or something?"

Seth shrugs as best he can. "We did las' time."

"And you're okay with that?"

Seth looks annoyed, because _come on._ "r'you gonna kiss me r'what?"

Dean smirks. "Don't have to tell me twice."

It's not the most romantic kiss, but really, was there anything remotely romantic about kissing in the back of an arena on the dirty floor like animals? Dean's mouth tastes coppery like blood, and Seth keeps fading in and out, trying his best to give as good as he's giving. But wow.

Damn if it isn't a much-appreciated reprieve from all the shit that's been beating them down left and right tonight.

Roman rolls his eyes, shifts awkwardly next to them.

"Y'know, I'm still here too."

"Congratu-fucking-lations, big guy; you want a medal?"

* * *

Stephanie doesn't tell Seth the name of his opponent until fight night.

Seth's been in the arena for at least an hour, and he still has no fucking clue as to who he's facing. He knows it's not going to be Dean or Roman right off the bat; there's no way Stephanie would jeopardize the future of the Authority with a risky gambit like that because as long as the belt remains within the grasp of the three of them, there's no chance for a comeback.

Maybe it's Cena. Seth thinks about this more than he probably should, mulls it over as he laces up his boots. Would they risk putting Cena in the ring with Seth given their previous alliance? He'd been swayed easily enough in the beginning; they could use Nikki as leverage again this time around as insurance that John gives it all he's got. He'd definitely be under obligation then to destroy Seth.

This is infuriating.

And then there's a knock on the door. Seth looks at it curiously, wondering who's on the other side. If it was Dean, he wouldn't even bother knocking; he'd just barge right in. Maybe it was Roman, but his hands were huge; his knocks were heavy handed. This sounded much more timid, almost hopeful.

Guilty.

Shit.

Seth rubs at his taped ribs as he gets up to open the door. He sees the flash of orange before he even gets the door open all the way, but his guard still doesn't drop. "Hey."

John looks up at him sheepishly. "Hey."

Seth scratches at his chest under the tape, watching as John shifts from foot to foot. "Do you, uh…wanna come in?"

John hesitates. "Sure. Thanks," he decides eventually. Seth steps aside to let him into the locker room, and then backs away, making sure to keep an eye on John, who notices the wariness in Seth's posture.

"You can relax," he says quietly. "I'm not here to hurt you. I wanted to…to apologize."

Seth raises an eyebrow curiously. "Oh yeah?"

John nods, going quiet as Seth slips a shirt on over his head. He either doesn't notice when Seth winces as he raises his arms over his head to get into the shirt, or just chooses to ignore it. Probably the latter; it's kind of his fault that Seth's like this.

"I'm sorry," says John, and when Seth finally looks up to meet his eyes, he surprised they show the same sincerity. "I didn't want this to happen. I know that's no excuse, but-"

Seth shakes his head. "I heard. You were just trying to protect Nikki; Rome told me. They told me everything."

Cena looks worried now. "You don't have to do this," he says. "The match tonight, I mean. I told you that I would help you get out of this; there's always another way."

"Of course I have to do this," says Seth easily. "We can't keep playing cat and mouse with the Authority. It'll never end that way. If we're gonna do this, then tonight has to be that night." Seth sighs and sits down on the bench. "I'm exhausted," he confesses. "I don't – I _can't_ \- do this anymore. This has to stop, or I'm probably going to lose my mind."

"But not alone."

Seth looks up at John. John nods his head. "They're not gonna give you a fair fight, you know. You're the first person to stand up to them in a long time, and they know that you could definitely be the one to put them out of power. They're gonna throw everything they've got at you."

John offers him a small grin. "I've got your back. Dean and Roman may not like me, but I'm sure they'd say the same thing. We won't let you go out there alone."

Seth stares at him, nods eventually. That's all the confirmation John needs. John's smile grows, and its like it used to be.

"I'll get out of your way now," he says, looking around the room. "Nice gear, by the way."

Seth gives him a small smile in return. "Thanks."

And then John is gone.

* * *

Seth gets a huge pop out of the crowd when its time for his match. They're chanting 'you look awesome' amongst other things, which is kind of an overstatement, considering Seth's still got bruises around his legs and face and his ring gear isn't actually that impressive: he's wearing new shorts and boots, gold and black reminiscent of his indy days. His ribs are still taped up under his shirt (Bring Me the Horizon, because why the hell not?), but that's about as much protection as he can offer going into this thing.

He's prepared for whatever comes his way.

Once he's in the ring, he spares a glance back at the ramp, back towards backstage. He can almost feel a pair of blue eyes on him, burning through the titantron. Dean had told him before he'd gone, pulled him into a secluded corner, far from prying eyes, "You got this."

Hands on Seth's hips, his thumbs pressing against the delicate bones underneath, resting their foreheads against each other, Dean had pulled him close and murmured, "You got this, okay? You're a fighter; no matter what happens, we've got your back. We've got one of the best wrestlers in the whole goddamn world out there, after all."

He was smiling when he said it. "Don't worry about it."

Seth pretended that he wasn't.

It's maddening waiting for his opponent to be revealed. The crowd has begun to get antsy too, starting chants of 'who's the victim', which is totally not helping Seth's nerves, but it's nice that they're backing him in this fight. You'd swear it was an ECW crowd the way they bayed for blood.

Seth goes through a list in his head. If it wasn't John Cena he was facing, then who else would it be?

Kevin Owens? He wanted Seth's head on a spike anyway. But the Authority, they had to know by now that he was hard to control. He didn't like orders and he fought because he was selfish. They wouldn't risk putting the belt on him and having him turn on them like Seth had.

It couldn't be Kane, because he still hadn't yet returned. And they didn't trust Randy as far as they could throw him.

And then Seth knows. Almost on cue, the sound of Motorhead fills the arena, pouring out through the speakers. Shit.

Seth can't help but be a little pissed that his former mentor was the one they decided to sic on him. Of course it was Triple H. Of course it was the man who'd given him his humble beginnings. Of course it would be the only person qualified to end him. It was like adding insult to injury; the only person the Authority could trust with the belt was the Authority itself.

Seth tears the hairtie out from his head, lets his hair fall wet across his shoulders. _Well_ , he thinks to himself as Hunter himself comes stomping down the ramp, _here we go_.

He'd always thought that Triple H's entrances were menacing as fuck, but now, standing between the man himself, approaching him like a hungry lion, he kind of felt…unafraid. Like, he would be the one to put the man in his place, and prove that his stupid entrances were nothing but show. It was invigorating, but at the same time, it could lead to his downfall if he got too cocky.

So he waits for Hunter to actually get inside the ring and the bell to toll before he tears at him.

He's actually surprised that Hunter doesn't immediately go for his ribs like Seth suspected he would. It's a dead giveaway that Seth's shirt is hiding the damage. Instead, Hunter goes for his head, grabbing Seth and putting him into a headlock. Once that's cinched in, he brings his fist down hard on Seth's head.

Ah, there it is. He's going for the concussion.

So Seth elbows the man in the gut, as many times as he needs to to get Hunter off of him. The game's grip eventually loosens, trying to readjust his hold on Seth, and that's his golden opportunity to escape. He yanks himself free, regretting it when his head starts spinning, and kicks Triple H in the gut. Getting some momentum from bouncing off the ropes, Seth puts all the strength he can muster behind a curbstomp to a downed Hunter's head. It feels almost like the bones in Seth's leg reverberate on impact.

Of course it doesn't keep the man down. Seth rolls his eyes; prays for patience to anyone listening.

Protégé versus mentor, they go back and forth like this for a good ten minutes. Seth is breathing hard by now, his lungs screaming inside his ribs. Triple H, understandably, looks a little worse for wear; Seth had been just as relentless as he had. Supporting himself on the ring ropes, Seth glares at his former mentor across the ring.

"You give up yet, old man?" he calls, voice ragged with exhaustion. He's probably poking the bear, but damn if it doesn't feel good to know that he's the one that had to push the Cerebral Assassin to his limits in a match.

Hunter bears his teeth like a feral dog. "Not until you beg for mercy," he hisses. "And even then, I'll ignore it."

And with that, he comes rushing at Seth, running headlong at him in the corner. Seth lets his legs fall out from underneath him, collapses to the mat. He feels the vibrations of the turnbuckle post as Hunter comes plowing into it, missing Seth altogether as he rolls out from under the ropes and onto the floor.

Okay, ow.

Seth cradles his taped up ribs, biting his lip to keep from screaming. He didn't remember the drop from the ring apron being so steep; but then again, maybe that was only because he'd landed on his busted ribs when he fell.

From there, Seth tries to regroup. The match has only been going for ten minutes and he's exhausted. A sharp glance up at a recovering Triple H says that he's doing no better. So that's good.

Seth is pretty sure that he's got maybe another ten minutes in him at best, twenty in all if he manages to escape Triple H's eventual onslaught on his ribs. He's worked through concussions before, so he's sure he can make it this time around. He's wrestled for thirty minutes with Dean back in developmental; surely he can do it now.

If he can just wear Hunter down, he might stand a fighting chance. His moveset is a little more varied than the older man's anyway; Hunter's been doing this for decades, so he has the experience, but he's also got nothing new to show Seth in offense. Seth can dodge them all if he's quick enough; he's seen them hundreds of time anyway.

Hunter is scrabbling out of the ring now, looking around furiously for Seth. "You'll never beat me, kid!" he shouts. "You were my student, remember? I taught you everything you know!"

Seth musters up enough strength to pick the steel steps up on the far left of the ring, just as Hunter spots him, and leverages it into the air. "Catch that, you bastard!"

The stairs slam right into Triple H, knocking him to the floor, to the sounds of the crowd popping in bloodthirsty glee. It warms Seth's heart to know that he's gotten a ' _holy shit'_ chant out of them; that'll _never_ get old.

Seth gets back into the ring, lying on his back, trying to catch his breath waiting for the referee to begin the count-out for Triple H. If he does get counted out, while it's not as exciting as a pin, Seth is definitely more than willing to let the match end like this. His lungs burn in his chest as he gulps in air, his legs feeling like they're submerged in fire. Slowly, he rolls onto his side and gets to his knees, glaring down at the man on the floor. Triple H is struggling to his feet and the ref hasn't even begun counting yet.

Oh, right. No DQ's.

He's not going to make it. Seth screws his eyes shut and tries to steel himself for the next bout of fighting, and then decides to take a risky gambit.

 _please let this work_

Seth runs straight at Triple H, plowing right into the man's head with a suicide dive from the ropes. Seth has never been more grateful to land on his feet. He grabs Triple H and throws him back into the ring, moments away from pinning him when he catches movement in the corner of his eye.

It's not the mercenaries. Not yet. It's fucking Sheamus and Kevin Owens, like Seth isn't tired of seeing their faces. They're running down the ramp now, which only gives Seth a moment or two to get his bearings together and defend.

When Sheamus slides into the ring, Seth is ready for him with a superkick to the head that knocks Sheamus on his back. Owens is a little more cautious. Seth has to keep an eye on him lurking outside the ring, on Sheamus to his left, and Hunter stirring on his right.

And then the crowd pops.

Seth chances a look at the ramp and is more than relieved to see some familiar faces running down the ramp. Roman immediately goes after Sheamus, drags him out of the ring and whales on him, while Dean launches himself at Owens.

Seth will have to remember to thank them profusely after this, if the concussions don't render him a brainless blob. He doesn't even remember Hunter blindsiding him, knocking him to the floor and nearly taking his head off in the process.

Hunter rolls him onto his back and looms over him. "This ends now," he growls, looking for all the world like a crazed psychopath. Seth smiles, earning him a confused look from his mentor. "What've you got to smile about?"

Seth shakes his head. "S'just nice to know…that I was the one who broke you." And with that, he laughs.

He definitely feels it when Hunter presses his kneecap directly into Seth's ribs. If so much wasn't on the line, Seth might've tapped then and there. The pain was excruciating! But even if he wanted to tap out, he couldn't, not screaming and thrashing underneath Hunter's superior weight. Hunter is indulging his sadistic side it seems, twisting his knee into Seth's ribs. He grabs his wrists and stretches them high over his head, pulling, pulling, until Seth thinks he might just rip him in half from the chest up.

And then something clatters against the mat.

It momentarily disturbs Hunter, who looks around wildly for the offending object, and his eyes land on a steel chair that had bounced off of him. His eyes find Cena, who is standing there looking like the devil himself just rode out of hell. He's still outside of the ring (since when did he get out here?), not wanting to get involved and cost Seth the match, but the way his entire body spells impending murder tells everyone in sight that if Seth doesn't make the Game pay, Dean sure as hell won't hesitate to do it.

While Hunter's distracted, Seth makes a grab for one of the legs of the steel chair, nearly biting his lip off trying to ignore the terrible pain in his chest, and hefts the chair in his hand. He swings up.

The chair smashes into the side of Hunter's head and he goes down, landing painfully across Seth's ribs. Seth grunts and shoves him away, struggles to his feet and hits Triple H one more time with the chair. Then he scrambles up the turnbuckle.

Hunter is moving back down on the mat, and as he struggles to his knees, he and Seth's eyes meet. It's an odd moment, like everything slows down and time crawls to a stop. They see things in each other's eyes; Seth sees realization, resignation, and oddly enough…

Well, Seth hopes that what Triple H is seeing in Seth can only be determination. And then, Seth executes such a picture perfect sunset flip that he can hear even the commentators' geeking out about it.

One…two…three.

It was over. The Authority was dead.

Amidst all the cheering and congratulations from the crowd, Seth can hear his name being called. Everyone in the arena, of course, has Seth Rollins' name on their lips, but he can only hear just the two voices. Just the two.

Someone is crouched over him patting his cheek, gathering him up in their arms. _It's okay_ , he thinks, It's someone he knows. Someone he lik – _loves_.

The last scene of the Monday night Raw taping is an ecstatic Dean Ambrose with Roman Reigns by his side, cradling Seth in his arms. They would never admit it, but, yes, there were tears.

Just don't bring it up.

* * *

Seth wakes up a few hours after the match. He'd been unconscious for the better part of the Raw post-show, the wear-and-tear of the previous fight having taken its toll on his body greatly.

He's by the pool now, having escaped the constant congratulations of his peers back in the hotel, needing a quiet place to think. He remembers how this all started; with a quiet night by the pool after a grueling match that turned his world upside down. It had been a rough road, and it felt as though it had taken years. It had only been a few months, in hindsight, which was still a bitch, no matter how you looked at her.

Now Seth is just sitting here by the pool, one arm wrapped around his still aching ribs, thinking about one question. Goliath was dead, so now what?

"There you are."

Seth cranes his neck to see Dean padding up behind him. "Hey dumb kid," he says, plopping down on the edge of the pool next to him. "I thought you would be back upstairs sleepin'." Pointedly, he adds, "Like you're s'posed to be. Y'know Roman'll have a fit if he finds out you're gone."

Seth shrugs. "Maybe. But I like it out here."

"Well," says Dean slowly, "What happens now, oh fearless leader?"

Seth rolls his eyes good-naturedly. "Please. I'm hardly the leader. Everyone knows that's Roman's gig. And I'm not sure actually." He sheepishly rubs the back of his neck. "I never actually planned this far."

Dean gives him an unimpressed look. "Bullshit. You've probably got the next time you're gonna blink planned out."

Seth rolls his eyes again and Dean grins, bumps his shoulder. "Don't worry about it," he says. "Whatever comes next, you know I'm with you."

They both slip into a comfortable silence, and Seth doesn't miss Dean's attempt to walk his fingers across the short distance between them to lace up with Seth's. This was a side of Dean that Seth had no experience with. He'd never been on the receiving end of Dean's affections; well, romantically. It was kind of nice. Maybe he didn't love Dean as much as Dean obviously loved him, but he was getting there, with every fucking dimpley grin that he flashed him that made his chest hurt.

-end-


End file.
